literature
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Ep. 29 – Gaze in Your Omphalos
In this installment of Blooms & Barnacles, Kelly and Dermot engage in some good, old-fashioned navel gazing. Discussion topics include working class life in Edwardian Dublin, the poetry of Algernon Swinburne, the perils of childbirth during the same period, gothic horror, whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons, and why Kelly thinks people in antiquity had…
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The Word Known to All Men
To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.” The lines above appear towards the…
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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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Ep. 26 – Ineluctable Modalities
Ineluctable modality of the podcast! A discussion of the first paragraph of “Proteus,” in which Kelly and Dermot try to make sense of Stephen’s untethered inner monologue. We discuss Aristotle’s theory of vision, Bishop George’s Berkeley’s mistrust of sense perception, an interpretation of a famous meme, who Jakob Boehme was and what he meant by…
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Decoding Dedalus: Signs on a White Field
“Actuality and the material world demand a winnowing down of facts to one linear story which serves one party, is the shout of the victor. In Ulysses, the human form is allowed to be infinite; no fact is considered unhistorical, no victory will be dismissed as pyrrhic. Everything is included because Ulysses is the epic…
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Ep. 25 – Proteus
The time has come for Blooms & Barnacles to tackle Ulysses‘ third episode – “Proteus”! This is Ulysses‘ first “difficult” episode – jam-packed with multiple languages and obscure references. This week’s podcast gives an overview of many of the themes found in “Proteus,” including its connection to The Odyssey, the influence of esoteric doctrines on…
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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. 24 – A Shout in the Street
Blooms and Barnacles’ series on Mr. Deasy and “Nestor” comes to a close with a discussion of the old headmaster’s biased views of women’s negative impact on history. The relative culpability of four woman accused of causing history’s great evils is explored, along with what exactly Stephen means when he refers to God as a…
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Poetry in Ulysses: White Thy Fambles, Red Thy Gan
“[Rogues] have their several Wenches, and several places of meeting, where whatsoever they unlawfully obtain they spend, and whatsoever they spend is to satisfie their unsatisfied lust; wallowing in all manner of debauchery, converting the night into day and the day into night, damning and sinkling being four parts in five their discourse…” – Richard…
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Ep. 23 – The Nightmare of History
Kelly and Dermot deconstruct the nightmare of history shared by the Irish and the Jews alike. We further explore the intricacies of Mr. Deasy’s bigotry and what it tells us about what life was like in 1900’s Dublin. Other topics covered include one possible source of Joyce’s hatred of Gogarty, the correlation of antisemitism and…