McMorran, Ciaran (2016) Geometry and topography in James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7385/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Geometry and Topography in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Ciaran McMorran M.A., M.Litt. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Ph.D. in English Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow Supervised by Dr. John Coyle and Dr. Matthew Creasy Examined by Prof. Finn Fordham and Dr. Maria-Daniella Dick 2016 1 Abstract Following the development of non-Euclidean geometries from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Euclid’s system had come to be re-conceived as a language for describing reality rather than a set of transcendental laws. As Henri Poincaré famously put it, ‘[i]f several geometries are possible, is it certain that our geometry [...] is true?’. By examining Joyce’s linguistic play and conceptual engagement with ground-breaking geometric constructs in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, this thesis explores how his topographical writing of place encapsulates a common crisis between geometric and linguistic modes of representation within the context of modernity. More specifically, it investigates how Joyce presents Euclidean geometry and its topographical applications as languages, rather than ideally objective systems, for describing visual reality; and how, conversely, he employs language figuratively to emulate the systems by which the world is commonly visualised. With reference to his early readings of Giordano Bruno, Henri Poincaré and other critics of the Euclidean tradition, it investigates how Joyce’s obsession with measuring and mapping space throughout his works enters into his more developed reflections on the codification of visual signs in Finnegans Wake. In particular, this thesis sheds new light on Joyce’s developing fascination with the ‘geometry of language’ practised by Bruno, whose massive influence on Joyce is often assumed to exist in Joyce studies yet is rarely explored in any great detail. 2 Table of Contents List of Figures 4 Acknowledgements 5 Declaration 6 Abbreviations 7 Introduction 8 Non-Euclidean geometry and literature 16 ‘Fashionable nonsense’ 25 Outline 30 Chapter 1. ‘Writings of paraboles’: Geometric Traditionalism and Corporeal Topography in the Wake’s ‘Night Lessons’ 43 The Euclidean tradition: 300 BC—present 45 Joyce and geometric traditionalism 58 Geometric traditionalism in II.ii 64 Euclidean geometry and non-Euclidean surfaces : Triangles HCE and ALP 71 The candlebearer (i) 79 Conclusion 86 Chapter 2. Squaring the Circle: Geometry and Topography in ‘Ithaca’ 87 Non-Euclidean geometry in ‘Ithaca’ 92 Geometrising the universe 98 Mathematical traditionalism in ‘Ithaca’ 107 Rectilinear thought 114 The candlebearer (ii) 118 The cosmos, the body and myth 123 Conclusion 128 Chapter 3. ‘Shut your eyes and see’: Textual Topography and Verbal Geometry in Ulysses 130 Critical reflections on ‘Wandering Rocks’, the labyrinth, space and time 133 Textual topography 143 Verbal geometry 151 Conclusion 165 Chapter 4. ‘Putting Allspace in a Notshall’: Charting Wakean Territory 170 ‘Where are we at all? and whenabouts in the name of space?’ 171 ‘A worldroom beyond the roomwhorld’ 192 Conclusion 213 Conclusion 216 Bibliography 222 3 List of Figures Cover image: Detail from Clinton Cahill, Entering the Text, 2013. Charcoal drawing. Photo: Clinton Cahill Figure 1: H. S. Hall and F. H. Stephens, A Text-book of Euclid’s Elements for the Use of Schools, Books I–VI and XI (London: MacMillan, 1898), 8 46 Figure 2.1: Parallel lines on a hyperbolic plane 53 Figure 2.2: A hyperbolic triangle 53 Figure 3.1: Parallel lines on an elliptic plane 53 Figure 3.2: An elliptic triangle 53 Figure 4: The Finnegans Wake diagram: ‘a trillittoral probeloom’ (FW 293) 72 Figure 5: Edwin A. Abbott, ‘How the Stranger vainly endeavoured to reveal to me in words the mysteries of Spaceland’, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884; repr. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992), 59 77 Figure 6.1: ALπ translated as a Euclidean equilateral triangle 79 Figure 6.2: ALπ translated as a Riemannian triangle 79 Figure 6.3: ALπ and αλP translated as Riemannian triangles 79 Figure 7: Gerardus Mercator, Noval et aucta orbis terræ descriptio ad usum navigantium emendate accommodata, Duisburg, 1569 105 Figure 8: The narrative labyrinth of ‘Wandering Rocks’: a map 147 Figure 9: Father John Conmee passes Nicholas Dudley on Newcomen Bridge 157 Figure 10: ‘Bronze’ and ‘gold’ in ‘Wandering Rocks’. Detail from ‘Map III’, 161 Clive Hart & Leo Knuth, A Topographical Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses, Vol. 2 of 2 (Essex: A Wake Newslitter, 1975) Figure 11: A one-sheet hyperboloid. N. V. Efimov, ‘Fig. 1A’, ‘Surface of 187 Negative Curvature’, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Vol. 4 of 10, ed. by M. Hazewinkel (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1995), 76-83, 76 Figure 12: Theo van Doesburg, Tesseract With Arrows Pointing Inward, c. 1824- 202 1825. Indian ink, red ink and gouache on transparent paper. Photo: Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam 4 Acknowledgements I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, who funded my Ph.D. studentship and made this thesis possible, as well as the School of Critical Studies and the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow, who endorsed this project and have been a huge support throughout my doctoral studies. I wish to thank Dr. Bryony Randall, Dr. Alice Jenkins and Dr. Vassiliki Kolocotroni for their constructive criticism and advice during my annual progress reviews, as well as Helen Gilday at the School Office for her incredible organisational skills. Thank you also to Natalie Harries for diligently proof-reading my work. The staff at the University of Glasgow Library and Special Collections helped me come into contact with Bruno’s original works and other marvels for the first time, for which I am immensely grateful. I also wish to thank the staff at the British Library and the Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen for assisting me in accessing the facsimile editions of Joyce’s notebooks and other valuable resources. My doctoral studies were significantly enriched by the opportunities which I was given to present my research at conferences organised by The International James Joyce Foundation, the British Association for Modernist Studies, the Scottish Network of Modernist Studies and the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. I would like to thank everyone involved in organising these events, as well as the organisers of the Trieste James Joyce Summer School and the UCD James Joyce Summer School for their welcoming introductions to Joycean scholarship. I owe much to Dr. Adrienne Janus, who inspired me to re-read the works of Joyce and supervised my undergraduate dissertation on ‘Textual Topography in Ulysses’, which has since germinated and transformed into an important part of this thesis. ‘Muchas grassyass’ to the Finnegans Wake reading group at the University of Glasgow, which has been diligently coordinated by Dr. John Coyle for many years. Without the weekly babblings, ravings, obscenities and melodious outbursts of the Wake reading group, I would find myself alone in a textual labyrinth which I now know to be filled with the confused voices of others. Finally, I wish to dedicate a special thank you to Dr. John Coyle and Dr. Matthew Creasy for their patience, candour and infectious enthusiasm throughout my research project; and for their shrewd insights into the world of the Wake and beyond, which I feel truly privileged to have shared during my studies at the University of Glasgow. 5 Declaration I declare that, except where explicit reference is made to the contribution of others, this thesis is the result of my own work and has not been submitted for any other degree at the University of Glasgow or any other institution. Signature:........................................ Date: …........................................... 6 Abbreviations D James Joyce, Dubliners (1914) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) P James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) U James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), ed. by Hans Walter Gabler (London: The Bodley Head, 1986) FW James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939), ed. by Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet & Finn Fordham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 7 Introduction Introduction Geometry is the means, created by ourselves, whereby we perceive the external world and express the world within us. […] It is also the material basis on which we build those symbols which represent to us perfection and the divine. — Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning1 Geometries shape the way we read, represent and describe the visual world. Galileo went so far as to argue that the universe is a ‘grand book […] composed in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures’.2 ‘[T]he mathematical language’ to which Galileo refers is, of course, Euclidean geometry, whose laws were widely considered to constitute the original ‘language’ of the universe within Enlightenment thought. By applying the ideal objects, or ‘symbols’, of Euclid’s Elements—points, lines, planes, solids—we are able to measure (meter) the Earth (geo), graph (write of or represent) its topoi and map the contents of the wider visual universe in ideally objective terms.