Online reading, Thursday, 26 August 2021 (14.473)

The reading stopped at ". . . brenningly biddeth." (14.473)

Summary:

As the assembled young people continue to drink and joke, Bloom’s thoughts turn not only to Mrs Purefoy, who has been in labour since three days, but also to the memory of his son Rudy, who died when he was just eleven days old. He observes Stephen and feeling rather fatherly toward Stephen is sorry to see him lead a wasteful life of debauchery. 

Punch Costello strikes up a bawdy song, when Nurse Quigley comes to the door and reminds them to show some restraint as after all they are in a hospital. 

Bloom seems to be the exception to the drinking bout going on. In what is reminiscent of the earlier episode in the library, Stephen is being very voluble. He is quite liberal with his allusions to the old testament and he also refers to other well known - and also not so well known - works of writers, poets and playwrights and philosophers. Naturally Shakespeare makes an appearance in the references to the secondbest bed, to Hamlet and his father.

As Punch Castello starts reciting the parody of a nursery rhyme interrupting Stephen's oratory, thunder is heard from outside. Just like Joyce in real life, Stephen too is scared of thunder. Bloom tries to calm him down, explaining in his typical manner the cause of thunder as a natural phenomenon. But Bloom's words do not succeed in quietening Stephen's fear. 

As thunder and rain rage outside the hospital, the style of the episode changes yet again, this time to that of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist of the 17th century.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading, Thursday, 19 August 2021 (14.294)

The reading stopped at ". . . postcreation." (14.294)

Summary:

As noted earlier, this episode goes through the history of the style of English literature by showing stylistic progression in parallel to that of the embryo. Joyce does this by starting the episode using phrases of 3 words repeated 3 times (starting with Deshil Holles Eamus) in the manner often associated with ceremonies and incantations. He follows this by adapting the style of the Roman historians, Sallust and Tacitus in the section starting with "Universally that person's acumen is esteemed ... "(14.7). The following section - starting with "It is not why therefore ... " (14.33) is in the style of Medieval Latin prose. Soon the style changes to that of Anglo-Saxon prose, the 10th century style, attributed to Aelfric. Today's reading also encompassed sections written in the style of the 14th century writer, Sir John Mandeville and 15th century writer, Sir Thomas Malory.

Joyce narrates, within this framework, how Bloom comes to the hospital to enquire about Mrs Purefoy who has been in labour for three days. He encounters in the hall, a nurse, whom he had known earlier, and Dr. Dixon, who had once treated him for a bee sting, and meets a group of medical students and Stephen, drinking ale and making merry in a room of the hospital. They are busy discussing very hot topics. Stephen is his usual self, talking in enigmatic terms. Of course, all these happenings are often very difficult to decipher and understand in the medley of styles encountered.

And it is here that Bloom meets Stephen!

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading, Thursday, 12 August 2021 (14.78)

 The reading stopped at " . .  wariest ward." (14.78)

Summary:

The name of this episode, Oxen of the Sun, refers to the Homeric episode in which the men of Odysseus committed a grave crime - they killed the sacred oxen - while Odysseus was asleep.

Before he had written the episode, Joyce wrote to his friend Frank Budgen on 20th March 1920 that he intended to compose it in the style that follows the history of English prose, and that he would do it in analogy to the development of an embryo. 

Thus this episode goes through the history of the style of English prose. It does so by showing stylistic progression in parallel to that of the embryo. (The episode has 9 parts in analogy to the 9 months of pregnancy.) The language goes from the style of Latin to that of simpler Anglo-Saxon. Note that seeing language as something that could progress in a biological way reflects what was in the air at Joyce's time, when people were very concerned with the discoveries of Darwin and other studies of evolution. When languages were discovered to be related, when, for example, one could speak of “families” of languages, of the new science of etymology - studying word change, vowel shifts etc - they could be seen as evolutionary, something developing in a Darwinian sense. Joyce renders some of this idea in this episode by presenting language as something evolving almost biologically. The imitations of styles can also be seen as a translation of sorts: everything is translated into an earlier period. Ulysses has indeed been described as the book that translates itself.

All this makes this episode quite a challenge to read.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading, Thursday, 5 August 2021 (13.1181)

 The reading stopped at ". . .  winked at Mr Bloom." (13.1181)

Summary:

We are reaching the end of Nausicaa, episode 13. Dusk is falling on the Sandymount Strand. We have been sort of confidantes of Gerty's marital dreams. We have listened to the Litany of Loreto from the church near by, have witnessed Bloom's masturbation - another climax of the episode -, and have watched along with Bloom and the three girl friends fireworks from the Mirus bazaar. We have seen Gerty leaving the strand to go home and have realised that she is a bit lame. As darkness falls, Bloom becomes aware of a bat flying around, his thoughts turning from Gerty to the bat.

And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkle[s] , wink[s] at Mr Bloom (13.1180). This sentence marks the division between two parts in this episode: the first part is rendered in Gerty's style (sugary, inflated, ...), the latter part in Bloom's post-orgasmic, more down-to-earth, deflated style.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)