“Cyclops” in Progress, 1919

The surviving early drafts for the “Cyclops” episode of Ulysses show how Joyce moved away from the interior-monologue technique of the first eleven episodes, and they do this in some surprising ways. The drafts reveal him composing first the passages of “gigantism” and of dialogue and only later developing the memorable, nameless first-person narrator. They indicate the gradual development of the characters and Stephen Dedalus’s startling presence among them and reveal the close relationship between Joyce’s notesheets and his revisions to the episode. The early “Cyclops” drafts provide a unique glimpse into the beginnings of the new novel that Ulysses eventu-ally became in its last episodes. This early version of a chapter from “Ulysses” in Progress contains many details that were deleted as the article was revised into the shorter book chapter.