James Joyce blog
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Decoding Dedalus: Entelechy, Form of Forms
“—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of…
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A Shakespearean Ghoststory Part 2: Anne Hath a Way
“In fact, it could be argued that versions of Anne Hathaway are always constructed in connection with Shakespeare, and that the ways she is depicted are designed to produce a particular ‘Shakespeare’ rather than an independent portrayal of Hathaway as an early modern woman…” – Katherine Scheil “Anyone steeped in western literary culture must wonder…
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A Shakespearean Ghoststory Part 1: Hamnet Shakespeare
“—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began impatiently.” This is part one of a three part post about searching for real-life “ghosts” by prying into Shakespeare’s personal life. You can read part two here and part three here. Who was the real Hamnet Shakespeare? Not much is known about…
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Decoding Dedalus: Hamlet, ou le Absentminded Beggar
“The art of James Joyce, like that of Mallarmé, is art preoccupied with method, with how it’s made. Even the sensuality of Ulysses is a symptom of intermediation. It is an hallucinatory delirium – the kind treated by psychiatrists – presented as an end in itself.” – Fernando Pessoa This is a post in a…
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Decoding Dedalus: Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.
“Stephen disdains the subtle resuscitation of the Victorian bardolatry in the Revival’s aspiration to model the creation of Irish national culture on the use of Shakespeare for British national consolidation. Both efforts, to him, are grounded in the almost religious glorification of the poet.” – Irina D. Rasmussen, “Riffing on Shakespeare: James Joyce, Stephen Dedalus,…
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Decoding Dedalus: Folly. Persist.
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 line below comes from “Scylla and Charybdis,” the ninth episode of Ulysses. It appears on page p. 184-185 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the passage…