Description
Book SynopsisUlysses has been read obsessively for a century. What if instead of focusing on the words to understand the structure, design, and history of Joyce’s masterpiece, we pay attention to the numbers? Taking a computational approach,
Ulysses by Numbers lets us see the novel’s basic building blocks in a significantly new light.
Trade ReviewNumbers in literature often have magical or secret meanings, but this remarkable book also shows us other, quite startling modes of literary counting, giving us the pleasure we find only in the best critical readings: we are surprised and we wonder what to do with our surprise. -- Michael Wood, author of
Literature and the Taste of KnowledgeUlysses by Numbers is a winningly idiosyncratic piece of literary criticism, one that is both very much of its moment in many respects, and in a few others defiantly peculiar. Bulson has delivered a timely, restlessly inventive book that challenges the increasingly hostile polarization within literary studies about the use of quantitative evidence. It is a provocative call for, and demonstration of, a delirious, even enchanted kind of quantitative reading. -- Nicholas Dames, author of
The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian FictionUlysses by Numbers is an intricate, dazzling account of how numbers mattered to Joyce. Written with engaging lucidity and wit, this highly original book explores the numerical unconsciousness of
Ulysses through close analyses of style, characters, word counts, readerships, and compositional history. Bulson’s work is a permanent contribution to Joyce studies and essential reading both for Joyceans and for modernists more broadly. -- Katherine Mullin, author of
James Joyce, Sexuality, and Social PurityNearly a century after it was first published,
Ulysses still stands as the apotheosis of high modernism and a revolutionary moment in the history of western literature. But can the daring literary experiment be deconstructed like a complex mathematical equation? This intriguing book makes a convincing case that, yes, it is possible. * Irish Independent *
This is undoubtedly an important contribution in Joyce studies. * Times Literary Supplement *
Table of Contents0verture
1ntroduction: Ulysses by Numbers
No. 1. Making Style Count
No. 2. Words in Progress
No. 3. One or How Many?
No. 4. GIS Joyce
No. 5. Dating Ulysses
3pilogue. Miscounts, Missed Counts
Notes
Index
