Online reading, Thursday, 23 September 2021 (14.1457)

The reading stopped at "Silentium!" (14.1457)

Kindly note that no summary of the reading for this session is being posted here. Posting summaries will be resumed in two weeks. Appreciate your understanding!

Online reading, Thursday, 16 September 2021 (14.1197)

The reading stopped at ". . .  about the place." (14.1197)

Kindly note that no summary of the reading for this session is being posted here. Posting summaries will be resumed in three weeks. Appreciate your understanding!

Online reading, Thursday, 9 September 2021 (14.971)

The reading was stopped - midway of a long paragraph - at "... upon the menopause... "(14.971)

Summary:

Mulligan's attention now turns to the stranger among them, asking him - ironically - whether he (the stranger) was in need of any professional assistance that they could give. As the stranger, who, in fact, is Bloom, answers quite seriously that he has come to see about a lady, Mr. Dixon takes his chance to poke fun at Mulligan using bombastic medical terms. 

Next it is Alec Bannon's turn. Written in the style of the Irish novelist, Laurence Sterne (1713-68), this section describes how Bannon starts talking in a flowery language about his meeting a girl (Milly), of her beauty, etc. What follows is another play of words with double meanings. Does Bannon really feel that he should have taken his cloak along or something else, does the marchand de capotes (14.776) he refers to mean a cloak merchant or a merchant of condoms? After all this episode is mainly about sterility and fertility. 

With this kind of bantering going on, the style changes again to that of the 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), the author of The Vicar of Wakefield. A bell rings. Nurse Callan enters and speaks in a low tone to Mr. Dixon. The room breaks out again in ribaldry once she leaves. Dixon rebukes them, and leaves the room to go and attend to Mrs. Purefoy, who has just given birth.

Attention and style change again. Attention to the musings of Bloom, style to that of another Anglo-Irish essayist and political theorist, Edmund Burke (1729-1797). Bloom reflects upon the raucous behavior of the young men around him. As always, he is ready to find excuses for his fellow human beings, attributing such boisterous behavior as he is witnessing to their age. 

At this point, the novel questions - in the style of the political satirist, Junius -, what right Bloom, an outsider, has to have such thoughts. After all it seems that not everything is alright at his own home (. . . a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare (14.929)), and as he has a habit reprehensible at puberty . . .  (14.930),  a reference to his masturbating on the Sandycove beach. (See episode 13).

Online reading, Thursday 2 September 2021 (14.712)

The reading stopped at ". . . drake and duck." (14.712)

Summary:

By now we realise that this episode takes place simultaneously in two time frames, one referring to the time of the day (it is 10 pm) and the other to the time frame of the history of literature.

Buck Mulligan, who has been attending a party at Mr Moore’s, is on his way to the maternity hospital to meet his friends, when he comes across Alec Bannon, who has come from Mullingar, where he had met Bloom's daughter, Milly. Mulligan knows Bannon as his (Mulligan's) brother is staying with the Bannons. Both Mulligan and Bannon head to the hospital. 

With the change in style imitating that of Daniel Defoe, the 18th century English writer, the topic changes to describing the behavior/character of Lenehan, who is interested in horse races, and who always has many stories to tell. Lenehan says that he has made sure that Mr. Deasy's letter on the foot and mouth disease, which Stephen had brought earlier, is in that night's gazette. On hearing that the cows are to be butchered, Bloom, who had once worked for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a cattle, corn and wool salesman, questions whether the cows indeed have the foot and mouth disease.

What follows is a play on the word “bull”. In the style of Jonathan Swift, the 18th century Anglo-Irish writer, the assembly talks in turn of a bull that's Irish, of an Irish bull in an English chinashop and of the papal bull. The word, bull, becomes just an excuse to discuss Irish history at length.

It is at this time that Mulligan appears with Bannon. Mulligan comes in again as a harbinger of fun, of lightheartedness. He announces that he plans to set up a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos (14.684) and to offer his services to the poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion (14.689). Here Joyce is taking on the controversial topic of eugenics of which a chair had been established in the early 1900s at the London university. 

Mulligan's description of the project entertains his audience, except for Mr. Dixon, who thinks that it is a useless exercise like carrying coals to Newcastle.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)