tipsyturvy Ulysses

Declan Kiberd, famed Irish public intellectual and Shinjini and Eric’s professor at Notre Dame, joins the Three Friends for what was originally a “Calypso” episode but eventually becomes an episode about three episodes of Ulysses: one Declan loves, one he hates, and one he doesn’t get. Does everyone agree? Do your favorite and least favorite make the list?

There’s also a lot of Bob Dylan talk.

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Today we are joined by our special guest, Jeremy Colangelo, lecturer at the University of Western Ontario and specialist in Joyce and disability studies. Together with Jeremy we puzzle with various questions that have been associated with ‘Nausicaa’ for several decades. Is the episode truly split between two modes of consciousness, those of Gerty and Bloom, or is it Bloom’s consciousness all along? Is Gerty disarmed by the prose style of women’s magazines or does she truly have an agency? Is Bloom really the innocent everyman that we have seen in other episodes or does he have a dark side?

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Is Paddy Dignam actually dead? Do hanged men enjoy a final standing ovation? What is a nation? These are all questions that Joyce explores in the pub scene of Cyclops.

Wendy and Eric imbibe the "wine of the country" as they join a highly caffeinated Shinjini to discuss these questions and more. Everyone loves the Cyclops episode (it's funny, honest)  and the team laugh a lot but also reflect on the ambivalent nature of comedy.

Join them to discover who Garryowen is and just how so much depends on a biscuit tin!

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Recommended Sources (two pieces we've written about "Cyclops"):

Liam Lanigan joins us to talk about trams in Ulysses. Liam is an assistant professor of English at Governors State University in South Chicago. Liam is the author of a 2014 monograph, James Joyce, Urban Planning and Modernism and an essay in the recent Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies.

Eric dragged Liam onto the show to nerd out at Wendy and Shinjini about trams, the form of Dublin-specific public transit that features prominently throughout Ulysses. We discuss Joycean community, the localized individual experience of reading Ulysses in terms of where you’re from, and the history of Dublin’s tramways, all before even getting into the text itself. We try to find optimism about public transit and are ultimately driven to other texts, including perhaps an iconic movie musical to celebrate the communitarian, posthuman potential of the tram.

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

To celebrate Halloween, Shinjini and Eric compare favorite scary passages from Ulysses.

Today we are joined by our special guest, Katherine O’Callaghan, lecturer at UMass Amherst, who is currently completing a monograph on Music and Soundscape in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Katherine will help us decipher the music puzzle of “Sirens.” We talk about questions that have confounded readers of Joyce for years: How should we read the opening part of the chapter? Is it an overture or something else? How should we hear the music that is on the page? And last but not the least, Katherine reveals to us who the alpha Siren is in Ulysses. Hint: it is not one of the barmaids!

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Staying up late to say more about “Wandering Rocks” and getting a little loopy, Eric continues trying to sell Wendy on the episode, while Wendy shares some of her episode highlights.

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Eric leads Wendy and Shinjini—all back together in the same country after a long summer—through discussion of his favorite episode, "Wandering Rocks." Why is the episode about so many random Dubliners we haven't heard of before? Just how much fun is Corny Kelleher, and what is he up to? Why do we briefly follow a piece of paper floating down the River Liffey? Is Wendy coincidentally responsible for the death of Queen Elizabeth II, given the time of her departure from the United Kingdom? We consider answers to all these questions and more, in addition to occasionally bumping into things and claiming they were wandering rocks.

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Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Wendy is unavailable because of travel complications, and Shinjini and Eric fail to record a short episode about the Linati schema, one of Joyce's cliffsnotes from hell that adds new layers to the study of Ulysses rather than providing final answers. They gossip about a rude man on a train and a Ulysses bar in New York City, in addition to probing some global analyses of Ulysses.

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See our website and contact us on Twitter or at [email protected].

Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.

Vicki Mahaffey sticks around for a second episode to talk about “the splendid parable” (Joyce) of the Homeric parallel. Vicki reassures all of us readers of Joyce that, “nothing is totally ‘correct’ about Ulysses, there are simply theories and all are incomplete.”

See our new website and contact us on Twitter or at [email protected].

Theme song: “Come on Over” by Scalcairn, via Blue Dot Sessions

Special thanks to Carin Goldberg, whose cover design for the Gabler edition of Ulysses inspired our logo.