UlyssesIn80-Reading James Joyce Masterpiece in 80 Days
Jun 7, 2026 · 51 min · 11 segments
Recorded during the opening week of the 2026 Ulysses in 80 global reading, this conversation brings together Mark Sanford Gross, Cliona O'Farrelly, and Professor Sam Slote of Trinity College Dublin to…
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Sam SloteGuest
Mark Sanford GrossHost
Cliona O'FarrellyHostStephen is teaching, thinking about history, memory, and the weight of the past.
Is there something you'd encourage readers to pay attention to in this episode?
They're basically two halves, Stephen in the classroom, Stephen talking with Deasy.
The setup is surprisingly simple, especially in the second half of the episode when Stephen's talking with Deasy, a lot of the distortions in and around Irish history.
Perhaps for readers who are unfamiliar with that background, it's a good place to get the basic that will then figure into Ulysses.
Also, pay attention to how the history, especially by Deasy, is being misrepresented, that he's lying about it.
So the distortions around the sort of how history's told are themselves a part of the history.
And then the fact that then that is followed by Stephen thinking about the poetic possibilities of history even as he's engaged in this kind of dry, rote exercise of teaching these bored students, that also plays within that.
The question Stephen asked almost at the start, "What was the end of Paris?" That is actually verbatim from a, an Irish teaching manual from the 1890s.
It's a very mechanical process, but he's still trying to think, even as his students don't care about it, he's trying to think about sort of the larger issues and questions around that.
When Deasy says it to Stephen, talks about European conflagration, a lot of people might think that that's sort of Joyce just saying, "World War I, World War I." It's yes and no because the phrase was a cliche in the 19th century after the Napoleonic Wars, the fear that any sort of, uh, small outbreak across Europe could eng- wind up engulfing the whole continent.
In the context of Deasy means it's certainly not an anachronism, but it was also used during World War I to reference the war itself.
Stephen is teaching, thinking about history, memory, and the weight of the past.
Is there something you'd encourage readers to pay attention to in this episode?
They're basically two halves, Stephen in the classroom, Stephen talking with Deasy.
The setup is surprisingly simple, especially in the second half of the episode when Stephen's talking with Deasy, a lot of the distortions in and around Irish history.
Perhaps for readers who are unfamiliar with that background, it's a good place to get the basic that will then figure into Ulysses.
Also, pay attention to how the history, especially by Deasy, is being misrepresented, that he's lying about it.
So the distortions around the sort of how history's told are themselves a part of the history.
And then the fact that then that is followed by Stephen thinking about the poetic possibilities of history even as he's engaged in this kind of dry, rote exercise of teaching these bored students, that also plays within that.
The question Stephen asked almost at the start, "What was the end of Paris?" That is actually verbatim from a, an Irish teaching manual from the 1890s.
It's a very mechanical process, but he's still trying to think, even as his students don't care about it, he's trying to think about sort of the larger issues and questions around that.
When Deasy says it to Stephen, talks about European conflagration, a lot of people might think that that's sort of Joyce just saying, "World War I, World War I." It's yes and no because the phrase was a cliche in the 19th century after the Napoleonic Wars, the fear that any sort of, uh, small outbreak across Europe could eng- wind up engulfing the whole continent.
In the context of Deasy means it's certainly not an anachronism, but it was also used during World War I to reference the war itself.
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