Joyce’s Syphilis Play: Pedagogy and the Public in “Circe”

This article argues that the theatrical form of James Joyce’s “Circe” is intertextual with an international array of public pedagogical plays about syphilis that appeared during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Joyce’s novelization of theater anticipates the logic of Jürgen Habermas, who asserts that private novel reading, unlike communal spectacle, facilitates the emergence of a deliberative public sphere. Yet, rejecting the feasibility of a Habermasian public sphere that would cordon off individuals from the minds and bodies in their proximities, “Circe” inaugurates an alternative public generated through collective reading, prior to private immersion or public display.