In rereading Ulysses, I recently reviewed the passage where Mr. Bloom helps a “blind stripling” cross the street, and Bloom’s reflections remind me how central sense perception is to Joyce’s work.
In this post, I look at a few places where sense perception is important to Ulysses before turning to Joyce’s treatment of the senses in Finnegans Wake.
Continue readingThis post considers the symbol of the cross in Finnegans Wake.
Continue readingThis post discusses more of Chapter I.8, including the gossip of the washerwomen and the gifts for the children of ALP. It extends my overview of the chapter.
Continue readingAs I discussed in “The Prankquean’s Riddle,” one of the issues raised by the riddle — “Why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease?” — is the enigmatic question of identity.
Some ways of glossing the riddle include “Why do I look like you?” or “Why do I look like our children?” or “Why are we a family; what makes us a family (the Porter family, a pod of peas)?”
What is a family, anyway? What am “I,” that I can resemble or be something at all?
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The Suspended Sentence 