Authorial Interchanges

Abstract

Joyce is unique in the depth and resonance of allusions to other writers, both implicit and explicit, that surface in his work; he is a near-perfect example of what Harold Bloom would call a “strong” writer, unafraid of invoking literary models such as Shakespeare, Dante, the Bible, or Flaubert. The two writers I consider in this chapter cannot claim the sort of obvious presence that Shakespeare does in Ulysses, and neither can be considered a canonical literary figure. Stephen Phillips is nearly forgotten, although around the turn of the century he was widely celebrated as a major dramatic poet. Marie Corelli on the other hand was considered to have little literary merit by critical consensus during her life—although there were significant exceptions to this opinion—and now even her vast popularity has been forgotten. She is directly alluded to in the “Scylla and Charybdis” chapter and, I would argue, plays a significant role in it largely through the mediation of Shakespeare, who was an important figure to her, just as he was to Joyce. By contrast, Phillips might be termed an implicit rather than an explicit allusion, an allusion by inference, although I would argue that since Joyce demonstrably read Phillips’s verse play Ulysses when he was an impressionable adolescent, the dramatic poet has an undeniable textual presence imbricated within Joyce’s treatment of the Ulysses theme.

Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance. (U 10.1061)