Madtes, Richard E. "Joyce and the Building of Ithaca." ELH 31, no. 4 (December 1, 1964): 443–59.

Related topics:

Creation and Making
Language and Linguistics
Narration
Science

Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/joyce-and-the-building-of-ithaca/oclc/5552836498&referer=brief_results

Link to full text: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872356

Madtes considers James Joyce's various drafts of "Ithaca" (U 17) in order to establish Joyce's accretive writing style and provide insight into the language and construction of the episode. By including various samples of Joyce's notes, Madtes reveals how Joyce took scientific principles, such as "cross Xaction = nought" (449), and expanded them into prose: "Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication... to a neligble negative irrational unreal quality" (U 17.1933-5). By cross-examining the revisions of each draft, Madtes shows how Joyce intensified his satire of scientific language through all nine proofs. Madtes's "nutshell" example of this incremental satirization is Joyce's revision of the passage about Bloom's affinity for water, which Joyce expanded in every draft, eventually transforming the original 109-word answer into a 476-word answer and only deleting seven words in the process (458). The article concludes with a sense of relief that Joyce only used a small fraction of his overwhelming volume of notes in the final version of "Ithaca."

Citations and Related Sources