Blooms & Barnacles

Stephen Dedalus finally gets to the fireworks factory.

Topics in this episode include lots of Hamlet, Stephen introduces his theory of Hamlet, James Joyce’s Shakespeare sources, Elizabethan slang, Sackerson the bear, everything we know about the real Hamnet Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s reaction to his son’s death, how Hamnet’s death shows up in the works of Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s reaction to his father’s death, Shakespeare as a co...

Was Hamlet just distracted the whole time?

Topics in this episode include: the continued character assassination of Mr. Best, Haines makes a return, Douglas Hyde’s poetry, the artistic ethos of the Celtic Revival, the political demands of the art scene in 1904 Dublin, Æ, symbolist poetry and Stéphane Mallarmé, the influence of Mallarmé on Joyce, “Hamlet et Fortinbras,” Rudyard Kipling and “The Absentminded Beggar,” the politics of t...

Are you Team Aristotle or Team Plato?

Topics in this episode include Charybdis, schoolboys and schoolmen, whether or not Plato was shallow, artists being rejected by Plato’s Republic, platonism v. neoplatonism, Aristotle’s view of art, Stephen’s dagger definitions, the Plato and Antisthenes’ thoughts on horses, horse v. horseness, Plato’s Forms, the ineluctable modality of the visible, Joyce’s thoughts on William Blake, and how to s...

You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.

Topics in this episode include Old Ben’s critique of Shakespeare, bardolatry, Shakespeare as a symbol of English supremacy, how Plato is like Charybdis, formless spiritual essences, seeing ourselves as others see us, the paintings of Gustave Moreau, and so much theosophy.

On the Blog:

Decoding Dedalus: Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. 

Bl...

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, betrayal, W.B.’s shining seven, the significance of the number ...

Eglinton knows Best.

Topics in this episode include the real-life versions of John Eglinton and Richard Best, Best’s contribution to the study of Irish mythology, how Best supported James Joyce’s abandoned music career, what his portrayal in Ulysses gets right and wrong, how the real Best felt about his fictional counterpart in Ulysses, gay-coding and homophobia in the fictional portrayal of Best, Oscar Wilde, the ancient Greeks, Jo...

Here be monsters.

We crack into Ulysses' ninth episode: "Scylla and Charybdis." Topics in this episode include: a great philosopher's thoughts on Shakespeare, Dermot, another great philosopher's, thoughts on Shakespeare, Odysseus' encounter with Scylla and Charybdis, the geography and currents of the Strait of Messina that likely inspired the story of Scylla and Charybdis, the triumphant return of Stephen Dedalus, Aristotle and Plat...

A wild Blazes Boylan appears.

Topics in this episode include the incredible story of Reverend Thomas Connellan, the Bible Wars, Soupers, the Bird’s Nest orphanage, apostasy and conversion, a typographical error heroically corrected, the blind stripling, whether or not the blind stripling actually wants help from Leopold Bloom, Bloom’s savior complex, Bloom’s empathy, the history of blind piano tuners, whether or not blind people’s o...

I need to see a man about a horse.

Topics in this episode include a return to nutarianism, Tom Rochford’s surprisingly heroic back story, the Ascot Gold Cup, racehorses with weird names, Jack B. Yeats’ Olympic career, the life cycle of a pernicious rumor, Tom Rochford’s invention, Don Giovanni’s ending (spoiler alert), peristalsis nearing its inevitable conclusion, Prescott’s Dye Works, gambling culture in Edwardian Dublin, the clas...

Artist Penelope Wade joins the podcast to discuss her project, "The Tarot of Mme Marion Bloom." Wade uses collages of found objects to create densely symbolic images based on the themes and characters in Ulysses. She has arranged her collages into a one-of-a-kind tarot deck. We discuss tarot, Ulysses, Molly Bloom. Kelly even gets a tarot reading!

Listen to or watch the full episode at patreon.com/barnaclecast

You can see Penelope's a...

Are you on the level?

Topics in this episode include discussion of whether or not Leopold Bloom is a freemason, how well Nosey Flynn knows the business of the other Dubliners, why Bloom never thinks about being a freemason, whether or not Tom Kernan is in the craft, whether or not you can leave the freemasons, freemason symbols and lore, whether Bloom has connections to the upper echelons of Dublin society, the Hungarian lottery tic...