The Mismeasure of Bloom: Sandow, Folklore, Scientific Racism, Eugenics

• Austin Briggs ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Tulsa

     University of Tulsa

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: James Joyce quarterly, ISSN 0021-4183, Vol. 59, Nº. 4, 2022, págs. 597-615
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This essay addresses ways in which Bloom is mismeasured by himself and by others. The ideal set by Eugen Sandow, "the perfect man," establishes a physical standard Leopold Bloom can only fail to meet; the Citizen and other barflies in "Cyclops," as well as Bloom's projections of Buck Mulligan and others in "Circe," claim variously that he is demented, deformed, and diseased. Such cruel diagnoses reflect anti-Semitic and anti-Gaelic prejudices deriving from folklore, scientific racism, and eugenics. Because the physical and psychological failings attributed to Bloom—some of them positively lunatic in nature—are so comically exaggerated, we are brought to appreciate Bloom's value. Declared repeatedly to be abnormal and even subnormal, he expands our sense of what normal is.