ABSTRACT
In the Homeric parody Ulysses-Bloom passes unnoticed between the whirlpool Charybdis and the many-headed monster Scylla, who stretches out her six necks to snatch up victims from passing ships. Here Scylla and Charybdis are but metaphors. The twin dangers are not physical but oratorical. The menace is created by a wordy encounter between Stephen Dedalus and a group of talkative scholars in the National Library. Whirlpool images occur several times, associated with the swirling deeps of Platonist metaphysics in which Russell and the librarians are whirled. By contrast rapiered Stephen, weaponed with logic on his Aristotelian rock (Kinch, the knife-blade), continually sticks his neck out to snatch bitingly at the statements of the others, taking on allcomers at once.
