Simon Dedalus
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“Sirens” Songs: M’Appari
This is part one of a two part series about select songs from the “Sirens” episode. You can read part two here. (Part two coming soon!) Stuart Gilbert, in his book, Ulysses: A Study, explained that in the view of the average Dubliner, music was an “essentially Italian art.” Simon Dedalus recalls the music of…
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Who were the real people in the Ormond Hotel in “Sirens”?
“Sirens,” the eleventh episode of Ulysses, is memorable for its musical prose, but it also stands out as an episode of revelry in the bar and restaurant of the Ormond Hotel. While Bloom cringes in anguish watching Blazes Boylan jingle-jangle off to meet Molly, the other colorful characters drown their sorrows in booze and song.…
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Ulysses & The Odyssey – Sirens
“A musical episode was easy to place in Dublin, for Dublin is, or was, a musical town, with a particular passion for vocal music. A few Dubliners of the older generation meet in the lounge of the Ormond Hotel and a couple of songs, with an improvisation on the piano, constitute the entertainment. No writer…
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The Most Historic Spot in All Dublin
“History in ‘Wandering Rocks’ is not only colonial history registered in the fabric of the city; it is also quite specifically colonial history distorted and dominated by Protestant and Anglo-Irish interpretations.” – Len Platt The eighth section of Ulysses’ tenth episode, “Wandering Rocks” opens with “two pink faces” greeting a third in some dark, dusty…
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Ep. 116 – ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA
Inspired by your beauty…effulgent. Topics in this episode include lemon soap, Ned Lambert, Wilson Ruttledge, Hedges Eyre Chatterton, waiting for your rich uncle to die, Dan Dawson and “Our Lovely Land,” Aristotle’s Rhetoric, epideictic speeches, encomia for Helen, what Dan Dawson’s speech has in common with classical rhetorical treatises, making fun of subpar art, masturbatory…
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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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Ep. 102 – Murderer’s Ground
Wanna grab a pint at the Brian Boroimhe? Or is it Boroihme? Boru? Topics discussed in this episode include the days when cattle roamed the North Circular Road, the Royal Canal, the identity of Dublin’s own Charon, locks, how realistic it would be for Bloom to walk to Mullingar (it’s not), the Brian Boroimhe House,…
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Ep. 101 – Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kay ee double ell wy. I can’t this song out of my head. Topics in this episode include Dermot on quantum mechanics, the phenomenon of ebullition, galloping funeral carriages, the Gordon Bennett, top speeds of old race cars, 100+ year old music hall songs, the Mater hospital, Orion, Joe Cuffe, sassy Leopold Bloom, kindness to…
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Ep. 99 – The Best Death
Rattle his bones over the stones! He ’s only a pauper whom nobody owns! Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of infant death and suicide. Topics in this episode include an O’Connell St. history quiz, how Dermot was radicalized as a ten-year-old, the demise of Nelson’s pillar, the floozie in the jacuzzi, Paddy’s adelite face…
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Ep. 98 – Reuben J. Dodd
How long can you hold a grudge? Topics in this episode include Mr. Power’s kept woman, hot 1904 gossip, rumpsteak, Reuben J. Dodd the Younger’s plunge into the Liffey, Bloom’s storytelling ability, pre-decimal currency, petty score settling, Elvery’s elephant, our favorite vegetarian restaurant in Dublin, Barabbas, chisellers, gombeens, usury, antisemitic stereotypes, whether Bloom is a…