From Bird Girls to Bat Souls: Joycean Transformations of a Homeric Trope

We read a funny episode in James Joyce's Ulysses as a valuable reworking of a motif from his earlier Portrait. In "Nausicaa"'s parody, Stephen Dedalus's bird girl has become Leopold Bloom's bat-girl, and Homer's little black trope returns in multiple roles as awakening soul, priestly vampire, and sexual liaison.