Canon Fodder

When I think of Joyce I think of spindle-elm, rectors’ benches and ash-switches, the thrash and wail of God’s will into the seats of little boy’s knee-pants. Joyce’s inimitable understanding of Aquinas is evident throughout A Portrait, Ulysses and the Wake, Stephen’s exegesis on substantive form, Jesuit dogma and surplice, a Hegelian kick at the merciless mercy of a higher Jesuit education. As I am rereading Aquinas, under the tutelage of an inimitable Thomistic scholar, I can see the connections that Joyce makes between religious messianicism and dogs’bodies; James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Young Hegelian, slayer of transubstantiation and dogma, canon fodder for the intemperate and Guinness-weary.