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Category: Christopher Palles

Blooming Lawyers: from Sadgrove v Hole, via Palles CB and Ulysses, to Facebook

10 October, 202210 October, 2022
| 3 Comments
| Christopher Palles, Defamation, Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, James Joyce

Palles and Joyce (images via Wikipedia, edited)I was reminded (plug alert) of my piece “The Aeolus Episode in Ulysses and the Freeman’s Journal: Chief Baron Palles and the law of defamation”, chapter 12 in Oonagh B Breen & Noel McGrath (eds) Palles. The Legal Legacy of the last Lord Chief Baron (Four Courts Press, 2022) (noted here), when I had the pleasure of reading the recent re-publication of Brian McMahon’s article (first published: Law Society Gazette, October 2004, 12), focusing on Dublin’s legal fraternity in Ulysses by James Joyce (pictured left, on the right).

To celebrate the 100th anniversary this year of the publication of Ulysses by Syliva Beach in Paris, this month’s Law Society Gazette (October 2022 (pdf), 41) has reproduced McMahon’s excellent and entertaining article.

Here are some extracts from it about three minor elements of the book that raise interesting issues of a legal nature:

James Joyce’s Ulysses is set in Dublin on 16 June 1904, and its two principal characters are Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Bloom is the novel’s hero, and his journey around Dublin echoes Odysseus’ journey in Homer’s Odyssey. …

… Martin Cunningham tells … Bloom, how Reuben J’s son tried to commit suicide by jumping into the Liffey, but was saved by a workman who was rewarded with a florin.

…

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The Aeolus Episode in Ulysses and the Freeman’s Journal: Chief Baron Palles and the law of defamation

16 June, 202226 July, 2022
| 1 Comment
| Christopher Palles, Defamation, Defamation, James Joyce

Bloomsday 2022 is a good day to note the imminent publication the following (from the introduction and conclusion; footnotes mostly omitted):

The Aeolus Episode in Ulysses and the Freeman’s Journal: Chief Baron Palles and the law of defamation

Breen-McGrath-PallesChristopher Palles is one of the many real Dubliners in Joyce’s Ulysses. The title refers to the Roman name of a Greek hero, Odysseus; and the novel roughly corresponds to various episodes in Homer’s Odyssey, telling the story of Dublin through the wanderings of Leopold Bloom (Homer’s Odysseus) on 16 June 1904. In the Odyssey, Aeolus, the warden of the winds, seeks to help Odysseus. In the Aeolus episode in Ulysses, Bloom visits his workplace, the Freeman’s Journal, and almost crosses paths with Stephen Dedalus (Homer’s Telemachus, the other great protagonist in Ulysses).

In the Aeolus episode, many of the novel’s characters discuss the issues of the day in the Journal’s offices. J.J. O’Molloy (a once-promising lawyer now fallen on hard times) interrupts Professor MacHugh’s discourse on the grandeur that was Rome, to ask ‘Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? … It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly …’.

…

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