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Abstract
The Garland Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition (1986 [1984]), edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, marks a watershed in twentieth-century editorial practice and textual study. Availing itself of pioneering documentary procedures – genetic transcription and collation ‘electronically typeset by pagina GmbH in Tübingen from the processed text generated by the editing program TUSTEP’ (McGann, Criticism 27.3 [1985]: 283 – 305 at 301) – and the innovative blending of German and Anglo-American editing methods, the Garland Ulysses establishes, on its left-hand pages, a continuous manuscript text recording the work's highly complex stages of textual development, and on its right-hand pages, a clear reading text that Joyce never saw. Taking this editorial turning point as its own departure, this article conceives a new textuality on aligning the compositional and transmissional diachrony of Ulysses with the study of orality and literacy. The alignment rests upon the conceptual scaffolding identified in the article's first two sections and is evidenced thereafter by analysis of the novel's seventh episode. In a concluding move, the article proposes a methodological shift in literary interpretation, one seeing Ulysses resolutely exploit the dovetailed interplay of speech and writing.
Notes
1 I am grateful to Trinidad Infante Moraño and Pablo Simons Infante for contributing to this essay.
2 Since its volumes are unpaginated, I cite the facsimile parenthetically as R plus n.p.
3 For Gabler's explication of the principles and assumptions adopted in the Garland Ulysses, see Gabler (Citation1986a: 1864 – 7, 1870 – 73, 1876 – 9, 1881 – 2, 1891 – 1907).
4 For a detailed description of the Garland Ulysses's technical procedures, see Gabler (Citation1980, Citation1986a: 1905 – 907).
5 Scathing debate began at the 1985 Society for Textual Scholarship conference in New York, where John Kidd presented ‘Errors of Execution in the 1984 Ulysses’, to which Gabler responded with the unannounced ‘A Response to: John Kidd, “Errors of Execution in the 1984 Ulysses”’; both papers appear in the special issue Studies in the Novel 22 (1990), 243 – 9, 251 – 6. For a catalogue of the Garland edition's early reception, see in this issue Charles Rossman, ‘The “Gabler Ulysses”: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography’, 257 – 69.
6 Spearheading the cause for rejection, Kidd impugns the edition, particularly its 1986 one-volume trade edition, in ‘The Scandal of Ulysses’, The New York Review of Books 35.11 (30 June 1988): 32 – 9, in ‘An Inquiry into Ulysses: The Corrected Text’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82 (1988): 411 – 584, and elsewhere.
7 So far as I know, this alignment and its correlate interplay of speech and writing have not been articulated elsewhere. A discerning essay reaching different conclusions is Donald F. Theal, ‘Beyond the Orality/Literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and the Pre-History of Cyberspace’, Postmodern Culture 2.3 (May 1992).
8 The post-1984 edition is James Joyce, Ulysses: A Reader's Edition, ed. Danis Rose, London: Picador, 1997.
9 See also Gabler (Citation1986b: vii – viii; 1987: 112).
10 Following scholarly convention, I cite the Garland clear reading text parenthetically as U plus episode and line number.
11 Following scholarly convention, I cite the Archive parenthetically as JJA plus volume and page number.
12 James Joyce, Ulysses: The 1922 Text, ed. Jeri Johnson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. I cite this edition parenthetically as 1922 plus page number.
13 See Hans Walter Gabler, ‘Textual Notes’, in James Joyce, Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition, p. 1735.