Everything You Always Wanted to Know: Ulysses and the Enkuklios Paideia

Critical debate around the generic status of Ulysses as either an epic or an encyclopedic narrative has so far omitted the fact that the latter form is historically linked to the former. The encyclopedia stems conceptually (and etymologically) from the ancient Mediterranean ideal of the enkuklios paideia, or "all-encompassing education," that the Homeric epic was proverbially understood to provide. This essay examines how Joyce's 1922 novel rehearses the idea of the enkuklios paideia through its epic borrowings and encyclopedic tendencies even though it always fails to deliver on the totalization of knowledge it implicitly promises. This inevitable failure, I argue, ultimately makes the important propaedeutic statement that the fullest knowledge is not simply acquired through the catechizing propensities of single books (such as this novel), but rather through the kinds of efforts of interpretive communities that Ulysses repeatedly endorses.