An Abode of Bliss: Plumtree’s Potted Meat and the Allegory of the Theologians

Abstract

This essay argues that, late in the process of composing Ulysses , Joyce expanded the Plumtree’s Potted Meat motif (a fairly simple sexual double entendre marking Bloom as a cuckold) first by introducing the image of a tree into the motif and using that image to link it to “ A Pisgah Sight of Palestine ,” and then, later, by recognizing or emphasizing the plumtree-like quality of the image of “[t]he heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” It also proposes that Joyce saw in this late, expanded version of the motif an analog to the four-fold allegory of the theologians as set forth by Dante in his letter to Can Grande Della Scala. The essay offers a reading of the motif according to the four-fold method of exegesis and examines the manuscript evidence that shows the stages of the motif’s development.