“The flow of the language it is. The thoughts”: On Time and Thoughts and Movement in Ulysses

Famously, James Joyce paid a lot of attention to the accuracy of his characters’ movements, calculating exactly how long it would take them to reach their destinations, and how the accidental meetings and sightings in episodes like “Wandering Rocks” could be arranged. This precision, of course, also allows us to time the mental processes which, after all, have to take place in real time. Several episodes, in particular, “Proteus,” “Lestrygonians,” and “Nausicaa,” consist chiefly of interior monologue and thus offer themselves to such inquiries. As Joyce, however, in the course of writing Ulysses, added increasing material to some of the episodes, the results of such calculations change from the earlier to the later versions. Our essay explores this aspect in the creation of Ulysses, comparing passages from the first stages to the finished product and investigating to what extent the changes may have an impact on the accuracy of Joyce’s calculations, but also on our understanding of the development of characters or on genetic research into Ulysses.