Joyce the Jesuit?

Joyceans, of whatever kidney, will, I think, enjoy Melbourne Joycean, Philip Harvey on Joyce's entanglements with religion.

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=31753


Philip's take is rich and wide-ranging and it led me to do a bit of thinking.  There is a special moment at the end of Molly's soliloquy where she becomes something like a Deist, with a sense of the holiness of creativity itself, and her body and its functions become one with the world of nature. Now, I know feminists hate that alignment (woman's body = nature), and for good reason (women are not just their bodies, and it's a deterministic identification which limits what they can do), but one has to grant her her sense of wonderment at the whole of creation, including bodies that do all the functions that still we regard as base and sub-notice.

I've been rocking up to the theatre all day and all week (indeed for several months of prepation), and enjoying our five performers' immersion in Molly, watching it build and build. Not to say that they are uncritical of her, or even all that comfy in her skin. Joyce is a risk-taker and pushes the envelope of normative 'decency' in ways that are still provocative 90 years after publication. It takes COURAGE to play Molly, uncensored. Floral Molly is easy by comparison.

Happy Bloomsday, Joyceans one and all. Hope you're planning minimally to read aloud on the day.