Circe (play)

Circe is the fifteenth episode of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. It is commonly regarded as the longest and most technically complex episode of the novel. Set in the red-light district of Dublin, Nighttown, around midnight on June 16, 1904, it is written in the form of a play script, incorporating elements of hallucination, fantasy, and expressionism.

The episode takes its name from the sorceress Circe in Homer's Odyssey, who transformed Odysseus's men into swine. This alludes to the transformative and often degrading experiences undergone by the characters in Nighttown, particularly Leopold Bloom. Bloom and Stephen Dedalus find themselves drawn to the area for different reasons: Bloom is searching for Stephen, and Stephen is seeking escape and release.

In Circe, the boundaries between reality and imagination blur. Bloom experiences a series of increasingly bizarre and often humiliating hallucinations, revealing his deepest anxieties, desires, and insecurities. He is confronted by figures from his past, subjected to public accusations, transformed into various identities (such as a woman named "Bella Cohen's beast"), and even put on trial. These hallucinatory sequences draw upon Bloom's memories, his repressed desires, and the cultural anxieties of the time.

Stephen, meanwhile, becomes increasingly intoxicated and defiant. He encounters hallucinatory apparitions of his deceased mother, with whom he has a complex and guilt-ridden relationship. The episode culminates in Stephen's striking a lampshade and becoming involved in a physical altercation with British soldiers. Bloom intervenes to protect Stephen, forging a crucial, albeit tentative, bond between the two characters.

Circe is characterized by its dramatic shifts in tone and style, its use of theatrical devices, and its exploration of the subconscious. It explores themes of guilt, desire, power, identity, and the relationship between reality and perception. Its experimental and fragmented narrative structure makes it one of the most challenging and rewarding episodes of Ulysses.