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Sunday 27 October 2019

Thursday, 24 October 2019, Episode 1 (1.1 - 1.176)

In the first reading session, we started with Telemachus, episode 1, and read as far as
"To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos." (1.176)

(Welcome to all those who have joined the new reading group that started on Thursday, 24th November. Information will be posted here each week on where the reading stopped that week and a short summary of what was covered at least occassionally.

The references given are from the version of Ulysses edited by Hans Walter Gabler, published by Vintage Books in 1986.

Key:
If the reference given says, for example, 1.20, it means that the content referred to is in episode 1, line 20 of the Gabler edition.)

Summary:
James Joyce's Ulysses starts with the Stately, plump Buck Mulligan coming up the stair case carrying a bowl of lather, a mirror and a razor. We soon understand that he is a very exuberant person who more often than not jokes about things. He jokes even about the Catholic religion, about the holy mass. He is soon joined by Stephen, who is quite opposite to Mulligan in character. Stephen's dress shows his poverty. Though he is displeased and sleepy (1.13), he comes up and sits down on the edge of the gunrest (1.37).
Mulligan shaves, and pulls out of Stephen's pocket a handkerchief (the bard's noserag, 1.73) to wipe his razor. Perhaps Stephen is displeased because of Haines, a visiting Englishman, who is staying with Mulligan, and who, the previous night in his sleep, was raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther (1.61).

The special features we come across on these pages: reference to other writers (Mulligan quotes from Algernon Charles Swinburne, Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde) and  passages of interior monologue, a technique for which this work is famous for.