Ulysses in Buenosayres: Leopoldo Marechal's Encyclopedia Argentina

This article posits that the encyclopedism of Ulysses serves as a strategy with which Joyce challenges the imperialistic hubris of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (EB11). It further suggests that Joyce's Argentine admirer, Leopoldo Marechal, emulated, in his Adán Buenosayres (1948), the basic strategy implicit in Ulysses, adapting it to Argentina's neocolonial situation and giving sharper point to Joyce's anti-British colonialism by inventing a caricature based on Hugh Chisholm, editor-in-chief of the EB11. The argument proceeds by examining how Marechal borrowed and refashioned materials from Ulysses. A comparative reading of the two novels attempts to shed new light on Joyce's epical encyclopedism.