Stephen Dedalus Stephen Dedalus Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and an important character in Joyce's "Ulysses". In "Stephen Hero", an early version of what became "Portrait", Stephen's surname is spelled "Daedalus" in more precise allusion to Daedalus, the architect in Greek myth who was contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. Buck Mulligan makes reference to the mythological namesake in "Ulysses", telling Stephen, "Your absurd
Lake Van Monster Lake Van Monster The Lake Van Monster () is a lake monster that allegedly lives in Lake Van in eastern Turkey. The Armenian chroniclers Movses Khorenatsi and Anania Shirakatsi wrote about vishaps living in Lake Van. According to the legend, the god Vahagn, the "vishapakagh" ("reaper of vishaps"), would plunge into Lake Van to drag out any vishap that had grown large enough to devour the world. Scholar James Russell considers that this legend is an Armenian adoption of Urartian myths concerning the combat of the god Teisheba with the water monster Ullikummi. Russell writes that into the modern period,