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A Bloom without a Flower, or How to Read "Lotus Eaters"
- James Joyce Quarterly
- The University of Tulsa
- Volume 52, Number 3-4, Spring-Summer 2015
- pp. 623-635
- 10.1353/jjq.2015.0032
- Article
- Additional Information
"Lotus Eaters" has consistently been read as a clear example of the correspondence between Ulysses and The Odyssey. By historicizing Joyce's use of the Victorian "language of flowers," however, I show that the overdetermined floral symbolism in "Lotus Eaters" actually undermines the various correspondence-driven reading practices it purports to indicate. This suspicion of reading by correspondence is depicted most strongly in Bantam Lyons's misreading of Bloom's comments about the discarded newspaper, a failure of reading that resounds throughout the text.