VARIATIONS ON TRANSGRESSION: A BATAILLEAN READING OF “LOTUS EATERS” AND “CIRCE” IN ULYSSES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2026.3.02Keywords:
James Joyce, Ulysses, Georges Bataille, spirituality, insect motifs, metamorphosisAbstract
Variations on Transgression: A Bataillean Reading of “Lotus Eaters” and “Circe” in Ulysses. James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is a novel celebrated for its detailed exploration of the everyday, and beneath its surface lies a rich interplay of sensory experience and various forms of excess. These dimensions of the text enable us to see it as resonating with the theories of Georges Bataille, a French philosopher and intellectual who was a contemporary of Joyce. By exploring possible intersections of Joycean and Bataillean thought, this article highlights some of the ways in which Ulysses asks its readers to reconsider their certainties about modern life. The analysis reads the narrative through the lens of Bataillean theories of sovereignty, eroticism, and economy, as well as the Bataillean conception of spirituality. A thematic close reading of the subdued, interiorised quality of transgression in “Lotus Eaters” and the chaotic, proliferating excess of “Circe” reveals that Joyce’s novel not only resonates with Bataille’s critique of utility but also stages the everyday as a space where sovereignty and eroticism emerge in muted and more explicit forms, respectively, thereby challenging the very boundaries between the sacred and the profane. This approach foregrounds Joyce’s sustained interrogation of social, religious, and moral norms that structured Irish life in the early twentieth century, revealing how the everyday becomes a privileged site of resistance to inherited forms of authority and power. Finally, the events of “Circe” can be interpreted as a sacrificial rite, in which insect imagery reinforces one of the episode’s chief motifs—the metamorphosis-assisted transgression of boundaries—providing the basis for my proposal of an “entomological Batailleanism”.
Article history: Received 18 November 2025; Revised 16 December 2025; Accepted 30 March 2026; Available online 30 September 2026;
Available print 30 September 2026.
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