Betraying Bloom

  • James Alexander Fraser
Chapter

Abstract

Ulysses offers a significantly different image of adulterous betrayal to Exiles. I show how Joyce uses Bloom’s experience of cuckoldry to ask probing questions about the boundaries of betrayal: At what point does an act of betrayal become an act of betrayal? In the act or in the conception/imagination? The role of sex as the ultimate synecdoche for betrayal is challenged and abandoned, while the traditional role of cuckold breaks down even as Bloom appears to embody it.

Keywords

Ontological Status Free Rein Fantasy Life Watch Break Dream Sequence 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

References

  1. Attridge, Derek. 2013. “Pararealism” in “Circe.” In European Joyce Studies 22: Joycean Unions; Post Millenial Essays from East to West, ed. R. Brandon Kershner and Tekla Mecsnóber, 119–125. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
  2. Barnes, Djuna. 1946. Nightwood. Intro. T. S. Eliot. New York: New Directions.Google Scholar
  3. Hall, Vernon. 1951. Joyce’s Use of Da Ponte and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. PMLA 66.2: 78–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • James Alexander Fraser
    • 1
  1. 1.University of ExeterExeterUK

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