Leopold Bloom
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U.P: Up
“Of course, there is the possibility that it means nothing whatever; then Denis Breen is projecting his own mental disturbances on an essential blank.” – Robert Adams, Surface and Symbol Bloom’s route to lunch in Ulysses’ eighth episode, “Lestrygonians”, is littered with obstacles. After dodging the Hely’s sandwichmen and crossing Westmoreland St., Bloom bumps into…
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Ep. 108 – The Chief’s Grave (w/ Jordan LeVeque)
Sometimes, Bloom is right to be wrong. Topics in this episode include Charles Stewart Parnell’s funeral and grave, Parnell as Agamemnon, Parnell as a Christ figure, graveyard iconography, Old Ireland’s Hearts and Hands, All Souls’ Day, euphemisms for death, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a stuffed owl, Milly’s funeral for a bird,…
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Ep. 107 – Far away a donkey brayed.
What’s up with that donkey in Glasnevin? Topics in this episode include seagulls in Ulysses, the Blooms’ old digs in Lombard St. West, The Joyce Project, Mesias the tailor, donkey lore, superstitions of death, a strange work of art, Lucia di Lammermoor, Ivy Day, the location of Bloom’s future grave, Altman the Saltman, Finglas, Joe…
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Kino’s & Hely’s: Two Ads in Lestrygonians
“In using advertisements to represent Ulysses, then, Joyce is intentionally degrading the novel, drawing it into the muck of popular culture for comic effect. A trouser advertisement in a rowboat: This is the language of Ulysses!” – Daniel Gunn Leopold Bloom, adman extraordinaire, can’t help but notice the dozens of ads he passes throughout the…
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Ep. 106 – M’Intosh
Who is the man in the macintosh? Topics in this episode include trying to figure out the identity of Ulysses’ most enigmatic figure, Penrose, HCE, Peter Falk, the details we can decipher from M’Intosh’s brief appearances in Ulysses, the infallibility of Bovril, Dusty Rhodes, why searching for Easter eggs can be unsatisfying, Theoclymenos, James Clarence…
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Ep. 105 – The Ides of June
Beware the Ides of June. Topics in this episode include the power of keys, John O’Connell the St. Peter of Dublin, “Silver Threads Among the Gold”, Daniel O’Connell the Hercules of Dublin, Daniel O’Connell’s cheatin’ heart, the Persephone of Dublin, Christian burial practices, blood libel, vampire imagery and antisemitism, Leopold Bloom’s version for everlasting life…
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Parallax
“The paths that Joyce lays out for Bloom and Stephen that day in Dublin are not parallel to one another, for then they would never meet. They are parallactic: his characters, unbeknownst to themselves, meet the same issues which themselves assume different appearances as they are differently perceived and experienced in the context of the…
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Ep. 104 – Broken Hearts
Corpses rarely wear hats. Topics include the correspondent organ of Hades (the heart), the O’Connell Circle, Daniel O’Connell’s heart, Tom Kernan, hats, losing your identity in the underworld, freemasonery, whether or not Leopold Bloom is a mason, Mount Jerome and the Irish church, Bloom’s denial of an afterlife, humor in the face of death, ghosts…
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Ep. 103 – Dominenamine
Is there really a church in Dublin full of deadly corpsegas? Topics discussed in this episode include Cardinal McCabe and his mausoleum, the fate of orphans and widows in 1904, “Three Women to Every Men,” Leopold Bloom’s irreverence in the face of mortality, Victoria and Albert, getting up a whip, John Henry Menton, Elpinor, Cerberus,…
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Elijah is coming! Is Coming!! IS COMING!!!
“This is the age of patent medicine.” – Stephen Dedalus As “Lestrygonians,” the eighth episode of Ulysses opens, Leopold Bloom’s tummy is rumbly. He’s on his way to a late lunch as the sights and sounds of Dublin stir his appetite either directly or symbolically. This foody-focus in James Joyce’s mind is a characteristic of…