Irish poetry
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Ep. 60 – The Holy Office
They both lived in a Martello Tower, sure, but what else do James Joyce and Bono have in common? We take a short break from analyzing Ulysses to take a look at one of Joyce’s early poems – “The Holy Office.” If you love 100+ year old gossip, strap in! This one gets dishy. Topics…
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Ep. 49 – O, My Dimber Wapping Dell
White thy fambles, Red thy gan! Wait, what? Find out what this phrase and much more means in this episode as we continue our discussion of “Proteus,” the third episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Topics covered in this show include: what Stephen means by “red Egyptians,” background on the Romani and Irish Travellers, Stephen’s class insecurity,…
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Ep. 38 – Pico della Mirandola like.
This episode of Blooms & Barnacles takes an esoteric twist as we continue deeper into “Proteus”, Ulysses‘ third episode. Topics include: why Dermot is not impressed with the Library of Alexandria, the length of a mahamanvantara, what the heck a mahamanvantara is, Joyce’s youthful rage put into poetry, Joyce’s youthful interest in theosophy, Pico della…
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Ep. 33 – Nuncle Richie
Stephen contemplates the horror of a visit to his Aunt Sara and Uncle Richie’s house. We discuss parallels in this scene with Joyce’s real life aunt and uncle, why Joyce’s Aunt Josephine gave away her first edition of Ulysses, the intractable Dubliner/culchie divide, middle class pretension, Hiberno-English, Wilde’s Requiescat, and the difficulty of parsing conversations…
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Ep. 27 – Nacheinander and Nebeneinander
Real talk: why are there no seagulls on Sandymount Strand in Ulysses? Have we stumbled onto a historical seagull-based conspiracy? Stay tuned to find out! Additionally, we’ll also continue discussing how Stephen’s walk on the beach is influenced by Berkeleyan idealism, Stephen’s perception of space and time, how blind people perceive the world and the…
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Decoding Dedalus: Pale Vampire
Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? – Stephen Dedalus This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and break it down line by line. The passage below comes from “Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses. It appears on pages 47-48 in my…
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Ep. 18 – Bloomsday in Melbourne (w/ Steve Carey)
A lifelong lover of the works of Joyce, Steve Carey is an organizer of the Bloomsday celebration in Melbourne, Australia. He chats with Kelly about (briefly) meeting Richard Ellmann, the joys and travails of adapting Ulysses for the stage, a heroic battle over trousers in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, and how to get a period hearse…
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The Women of Ulysses: Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Maud Gonne’s name appears in Ulysses’ third episode, “Proteus”, as Stephen rummages through his recollections of his brief sojourn in Paris. Though Gonne did reside in Paris in the early 1900’s, she never met James Joyce (or Stephen Dedalus), but their non-meeting…
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Ep. 3 – Joyce v. Gogarty
In this episode we tackle the falling out between James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty, the origins of the character Buck Mulligan, what really happened in the Martello tower, blasphemous poetry and how Joyce found his sense of humor. On the Blog: Say ‘Hello’ to Martello Towers Who was the Real Buck Mulligan? Poetry…