The Mystery of Litanies

by James Matthew Wilson

Litanies are one of my favorite forms of prayer: a rare pleasure that I look forward to on feast days, and a mystery that I sometimes contemplate and try to understand. Continue Reading »

28 Oct 2021

Ulysses and the God of Irony

by Kelsey Burritt

Allow me to summarize the plot of a 644-page Modernist masterpiece, James Joyce’s Ulysses: Two guys meet one day. The day in question is June 16, 1904 (Happy 111st anniversary!). The guys in question are Stephen Dedalus, twenty-two, poet; and Leopold Bloom, thirty-eight, ad canvasser. Stephen . . . . Continue Reading »

16 Jun 2015

James Joyce: Right About the Church?

by Melinda Selmys

In the opening line of James Joyce’s Ulysses, stately, plump Buck Mulligan bears “a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” Holding the bowl aloft he declares, “Introibo ad altare Dei.” Mulligan, in this symbolic action, expresses Joyce’s critique of Christianity: a combination of sadism, the razor, and narcissism, the mirror . . . Continue Reading »

25 Jun 2013