EMSAH Seminar | 'Divorce, not now': re-reading Ulysses in terms of Bloom v Bloom and Boylan (Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Div. 1904)

Event Details

Date:

Thursday, 21 August 2014 - Thursday, 21 August 2014

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

803

UQ Location:

Michie Building (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/emsah-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Presenter: Professor Peter Kuch

This paper interrogates Leopold Bloom’s late night 'thought' at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses—'Divorce, not now' (U 603:2202) — a 'thought' that comes to him among several others after he has discovered incontrovertible evidence pointing to Molly’s adultery. I have been researching why Bloom would even consider divorce; the legal, epistemological and textual status of this 'thought'; and its implications for reading Ulysses. Much of my research has been focussed on whether a divorce a vincula, ‘from the bonds of marriage’, that is a decree absolute, can actually be obtained for ‘injured parties’ who were Irish or Irish Jews resident in Ireland in 1904.

The paper focuses on Bloom entering the matrimonial bed; a comprehensive enquiry into Joyce’s attitudes to divorce, particularly as evident in Exiles and Giacomo Joyce, is for the book I am presently writing.