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)

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)