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Although there is no clear evidence for any direct acquaintance or influence between James Joyce and Mikhail Bakhtin, Joyce’s works can be read through Bakhtin’s theories. This essay aims at interpreting “Circe,” the fifteenth episode of Ulysses, through the lens of Bakhtin’s concept of “carnival” in which subject and object are indistinguishable, and the repressed others reverberate heteroglossic voices. In this interpretation, we do not limit “Circe” to Bloom’s fantasy; we can discuss a limitless carnival in which the boundaries between subjects and objects are erased, and the suffocated voices of the repressed others including inanimate objects during the daytime are all polyphonically resounding throughout “Circe.” Bakhtinian insight is very useful in reading Joyce’s text because Joyce’s project is subverting the seemingly fixed hierarchies and identities, and especially because “Circe” revises any totalizing interpretation of Ulysses.
