2024/05/14 by Samuel Slote · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Conflict of Laws and Jurisdiction #Intellectual Property Law
paper · doi:10.16995/olh.15270
openalex publication_date 2024/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
In the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus presents a theory about Shakespeare’s biographical motivations for writingHamlet, which he ultimately claims, perhaps disingenuously, to not believe. Stephen’s apparent disbelief in his own theory echoes Oscar Wilde’s‘Portrait of Mr W. H.’, which is referenced within ‘Scylla’, and which also propounds a theory of Shakespeare’s artistic production in terms of his biography. Furthermore, like the various characters in Wilde’s story, Stephen’s theory is propelled primarily from the internal evidence of Shakespeare’s texts. In this article, I will analyse the playful and learned insincerity of both theories through the optic of camp in order to tease out the implications that Stephen’s argument about Shakespeare has for James Joyce’s aesthetics.