Stephen Dedalus
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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…
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Ep. 134 – Parallax
If both clocks were correct, one would be redundant. Topics in this episode include the Ballast Office, the timeball, stellar parallax, ships’ navigators and chronometers, the whereabouts of the timeball, the political controversy of Greenwich Mean Time, Dunsink time, Sir Robert Ball and The Story of the Heavens, what the heck parallax actually means, how…
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Who Were the Real Men in the Library from “Scylla and Charybdis”?
This post is a part of an occasional series on the real people behind the characters in Ulysses. Ulysses’ ninth episode, “Scylla and Charybdis” centers Stephen Dedalus’ heroic defense of his theory on Hamlet in the National Library, pitting our young Artist against several of Dublin’s literary elite, including Æ Russell, Richard Best and John…
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Ep. 130 – THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
Nelson supposes his toeses are roses, but Nelson supposes erroneously. Topics in this episode include Barcelona, revisiting James Joyce’s Guinness ad, the history of Nelson’s pillar, Horatio Nelson, the final resting place of Nelson’s head, possible replacements for Nelson atop the former pillar, failed attempts to raise the wind, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or…
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Ulysses & The Odyssey: Scylla & Charybdis
“[The paternity motif], which, applied to the Godhead, has been so fruitful a cause of misunderstanding and dissension in the Christian Church, that this episode is the subtlest and hardest to epitomize of all the eighteen episodes of Ulysses.” – Stuart Gilbert “The Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies are the monsters that lie in wait in…
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Ep. 129 – DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
What if we held hands in the Akasic Record? Topics in this episode include too much information about the Freemasons, entering the Promised Land, Daniel O’Connell’s mass meeting at Mullaghmast, political radicalism, the Akasic Record, Stephen’s magic powers, rebutting John F. Taylor, Parnell’s parliamentary finesse, argumentum ad pasiones, leaning into your own bias, the origin…
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Ep. 128- FROM THE FATHERS
Featuring a surprise historical cameo! Topics in this episode include our final example of Aristotelian rhetoric, the only passage of Ulysses recorded by James Joyce, the battle of wits between Mr. Justice Fitzgibbon and John F. Taylor, misperceptions about Taylor’s oratory, the Gaelic Revival, Dreamy Jimmy, ferial tone, a Moses for Ireland, MacHugh can’t catch…
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Ep. 127 – A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
“Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don’t ask.” Topics in this episode include a rumor about Stephen, Professor Magennis, Æ the mastermystic, drama within Dublin’s occult circles, how Æ helped James Joyce get published, the opal hush poets, Joycean tarot cards, D.P. Moran and…
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Ep. 126 – ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. Topics in this episode include Grattan and Flood, Seymour Bushe and the Childs murder case, Hamlet references, Michelangelo’s Moses and where to find it, Lenehan’s cigarette scheme, J.J. O’Molloy’s love of forensic rhetoric, the shortcomings of memoria, court cases appearing in the works of Joyce, Samuel Childs…