Thomas Lyster

  • Ep. 165 – Mr. W. H.

    “—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.” Topics in this episode include Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” Shakespeare’s sonnets, the identity of the Fair Youth, the dedication on the folio of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the identity of…

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  • Ep. 163 – The Spirit of Reconciliation

    Bitches love sonnets. Topics in this episode include putting Beurla on it, basilisks and 13th century bestiaries, Pericles and purported Shakespeare apocrypha, the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship, Bacon ciphers, George Brandes, Sidney, Frank Harris, the power of a granddaughter’s love, Hans Walter Gabler and the most controversial line in Ulysses, Thomas Aquinas, George Bernard…

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  • Ep. 162 – Quaker Librarian

    I, for one, think geese really do have souls. Topics in this episode include librarian Thomas Lyster and his Quaker faith, why Lyster always seems to be dancing in “Scylla and Charybdis,” the journal of Quaker founder George Fox, what James Joyce knew about the Quakerism, Christfox, leather trews, confusing Shakespeare and George Fox in…

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  • Ep. 154 – Folly. Persist.

    Satan comes forward a sinkapace. Topics in this episode include Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Goethe’s thoughts on Hamlet translated through Thomas Lyster, Elizabethan dances, Sir Toby Belch, Monsieur de la Palice and a hilarious French pun, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Stephen’s six brave medicals, Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan, Cranly, Medical Dick and Medical Davy,…

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  • An Intimate Portrait of Mr. W. H.

    “The Love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that…

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  • Decoding Dedalus: Christfox in Leather Trews

    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.193 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the passage that…

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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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  • 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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  • 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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