Wilde about Ulysses: Deleuzian assemblages and the importance of being Oscar

While Oscar Wilde’s influence on James Joyce has been explored by many scholars, the flamboyant playwright, novelist, journalist, and critic’s importance to Ulysses remains elusive. We suggest that Wildean avatars—Deleuzian ‘assemblages’ (Deleuze, 1980: 340)—both open the novel in the form of Buck Mulligan in ‘Telemachus’ and close its public narrative in the shape of D. B. Murphy in ‘Eumaeus’, before triggering the private resolutions of the main cast members in ‘Ithaca’ and ‘Penelope’. These assemblages bookend the novel’s opening and closing, and highlight overlooked queer themes in Ulysses, particularly the socially constructed nature of identity. Mulligan and Murphy, highly costumed and performative, not only establish Wilde’s foundational importance to Ulysses but epitomize the queering influence that permeates it, a note that has only recently begun to be heard.