Martha Clifford

  • Ep. 81 – No rose without thorns.

    Did James Joyce once covertly suggest a new Guinness slogan? Topics in this episode include Mary Lost the Pin of her Drawers, flat Dublin voices, the Coombe, Bloom’s preoccupation with correct pronoun-antecedent agreement, Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary, a famlus forgery, Ashtown and the trottingmatches, a famous hole in the wall, alcohol…

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  • Ep. 80 – The Language of Flowers

    “Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume.” Kelly and Dermot untangle the mysterious language of flowers. Topics include James Joyce’s affair with Marthe Fleischmann, the pitfalls of method acting,…

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  • Ep. 79 – Martha

    Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. In this episode, Kelly and Dermot try to figure out who Martha, Leopold Bloom’s saucy penpal, could really be. Topics include Dermot’s interest in Islam, Bloom’s missing hour, Leah the Forsaken, jugginses and guttapercha, castration anxiety, hopscotch and marbles, senior infants, Martha’s letter,…

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  • Ulysses & The Odyssey: Hades

    Part of an occasional series on the Homeric parallels in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The Odyssey, Book XI: Odysseus travels to the underworld and meets the prophet Tiresias, who reveals the ultimate fate of Odysseus and his crew. Odysseus has a chance to speak to other souls in the underworld, including his mother, a parade of…

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  • The Language of Flowers

    “P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.” – Ulysses, p. 78 To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. Mr. Leopold Bloom is predisposed to skulk. “Lotus Eaters” is a particularly skulky episode, during which Bloom kills an hour…

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  • The Secret Life of Martha Clifford

    “Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds…

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