Ulysses — Source Research
Consolidated external research, with sources. Per the continuity discipline: the other documents carry decisions; this one carries the research that fed them, so the bundle survives loss of the chat history. Date-stamped. Preserve entries; do not delete unless outright contradicted.
2026-07-18 — Coverage survey: which dimensions are already taken
Purpose. Before adding two dimensions to the masters' ten, establish what the existing literature has already done properly, so the additions are genuine gaps.
Method. Web search across scholarly and general sources. Not exhaustive; sufficient to rule candidates in or out.
Ruled OUT — already well covered
| Candidate | Why ruled out | Key evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Smell / the olfactory | Substantial literature plus public projects | Laura Frost and Christine O'Neill on Joyce and odour; multiple theses; 2026 Irish Times piece on perfumer Meabh Mc Curtin recreating 14 scents from the novel with O'Neill; a VR/scent performance (Go to Blazes, Ulysses 2.2) |
| Error and misquotation | Dedicated essay collection plus a modern annotation edition | Errears and Erroriboose: Joyce and Error (Brill) — first major collection on the topic; Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses (Slote, Mamigonian, Turner, OUP 2022) accounts for errors line by line; Colm Toibin, "Arruginated: James Joyce's Errors," LRB 45.17 (2023) |
| Animals / the nonhuman | Two special issues plus a prior tabulation | Humanities special issue "Joyce, Animals and the Nonhuman" (2017); James Joyce Quarterly special issue; Robert Haas's tabulation of "over a thousand animal images" in Ulysses |
| Factual accuracy vs Thom's Directory | Precisely what the 2022 annotations already do | Slote/Mamigonian/Turner: Dublin is represented in Ulysses by proxy through Thom's, and Joyce inherits Thom's own errors. Aggregating it would visualise existing scholarship, not add a dimension |
| Homeric parallels, the schemas, textual/Gabler wars, feminist and postcolonial readings, genetic criticism, Irish reception | Standard fields with their own shelves | Attridge, James Joyce's Ulysses: A Casebook (OUP 2004) surveys the schools; Consuming Joyce: 100 Years of Ulysses in Ireland (Bloomsbury) covers reception |
Finding. Almost every content angle is taken. The openings are in method, and in what this particular reader is uniquely positioned to do.
Ruled IN — dimension 11, The Difficulty Curve
The abandonment of Ulysses is globally famous and almost entirely unstudied.
- The best-known metric is the "Hawking Index," invented in 2014 by University of Wisconsin-Madison mathematician Jordan Ellenberg, using the position of popular Kindle highlights as a proxy for where readers stop. Explicitly unscientific by its own framing. (Money, "Sorry James Joyce, the People Buying Ulysses Don't Actually Read It")
- The claim that most readers break at Proteus circulates as classroom folklore — e.g. Slant Books, "Bloomsday: How Ulysses Changes How We Read," relaying a professor's assertion that most readers will not get past the first paragraph of episode 3. Attributed to no study.
- General reader-abandonment data exists (around 29% of readers do not finish most books they start) but is not book-specific.
- Kiberd, Ulysses and Us argues for the common reader's claim on the book but measures nothing.
- A large guide and annotation industry is premised on reader difficulty; there is no study of the difficulty itself.
Conclusion. A genuine gap, and one where this project holds primary data no one else has: a complete dated log of one first reading with page-anchored questions at the exact points of strain, and the interventions that resolved them. Case study, n = 1, stated.
Struck — the translation comparison (was dimension 12)
This survey ruled a translation comparison in on 18 July 2026; the author struck the idea from the project the same day, as a structural decision (catch C-21). The coverage research that supported it, and its sources, are preserved in the repository history and are no part of the project's plan.
Sources consulted
- Attridge, ed., James Joyce's Ulysses: A Casebook, OUP 2004
- Slote, Mamigonian & Turner, Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses, OUP 2022
- Toibin, "Arruginated: James Joyce's Errors," London Review of Books 45.17, 2023
- Errears and Erroriboose: Joyce and Error, Brill
- Humanities special issue, "Joyce, Animals and the Nonhuman," 2017
- Morgan Library, "Thom's Dublin Directory" exhibition note
- Money, "Sorry James Joyce, the People Buying Ulysses Don't Actually Read It"
- Slant Books, "Bloomsday: How Ulysses Changes How We Read," 2022
Retrieved 18 July 2026 via web search; several items are search snippets only. Verify quotations against the printed sources before publication.
2026-07-18 (second pass) — coverage check on three candidate NEW types
Purpose. A review found the dimension list structurally repetitive — ten of twelve were the same operation (extract, enumerate, tabulate). Before adding dimensions of genuinely different kind, check whether those kinds are occupied.
Money / re-costing the day — RULED OUT as a standalone dimension
Thoroughly covered, and more precisely than expected.
- UlyssesGuide.com, "Money in Ulysses" — a dedicated resource converting 1904 currency to modern values, including Gifford's method of equating a 1904 penny to 1985 buying power via Thom's food staples, and a pint-of-Guinness exchange rate.
- ulyssespages.blogspot.com, "Prices in 1904 Dublin" — a full price table across the novel with US2014 conversions and line references.
- JJON, "liquidity" — analysis precise enough to determine which coins Bloom could physically have been holding, and how Gabler's emendation of the chocolate price from one penny to one shilling makes the Ithaca budget balance.
- Bloom's budget itself is widely reproduced, and its known omissions (the 11s at Bella Cohen's, at least one tram fare) are documented.
Consequence: dimension 4, The Ledger, is retained on the list but flagged as duplicative. It is one of the six that the Type-I cap should drop.
Immersive / interactive recreation — RULED OUT in that form
- Joycestick (Boston College, led by Prof. Joseph Nugent, public debut at the James Joyce Centre on Bloomsday 2017) — a VR game in which players move through scenes from the novel and gather 3D-modelled objects (Bloom's hat, Plumtree's Potted Meat, a phonograph), triggering sound and narration. Explicitly aimed at bringing new audiences to a famously difficult book.
- JoyceWays — an earlier multimedia tour by the same team rendering nearly 100 Dublin locations with archival research, mapping and camera work.
Consequence: an immersive recreation would duplicate Joycestick, which is in effect the Object Museum in three dimensions. Dimension 13 is therefore specified with no representation at all — no streets, no rendered Dublin. A constraint graph, a clock and a purse. Different object, different claim.
Visual atlas — RULED IN
Ulysses has illustrated editions (Matisse, Motherwell) and a comics adaptation. All are illustration, which serves the text. A Warburg-method atlas — panels where meaning is produced by juxtaposition and the caption is refused — is a different form, and no atlas of this novel appears to exist. Adopted as dimension 14.
Standing rule adopted
A12 — Assume a subject is taken until checked. Of seven plausible "nobody has done
this" candidates tested across both passes, five were occupied, two survived, and one
survived only after being re-specified to avoid an existing project. Novelty claims go
through source-research.md first.
Sources consulted (second pass)
- UlyssesGuide.com, "Money in Ulysses" and "17. Ithaca"
- ulyssespages.blogspot.com, "Prices in 1904 Dublin"
- JJON (Joyce's Environs), "liquidity"
- Boston College news, "BC Students' 'Ulysses' VR Game Launches in Dublin"
- The American Scholar, "Ulysses: The Video Game," 2017
- Smithsonian, Mental Floss, phys.org coverage of Joycestick, 2017
Retrieved 18 July 2026 via web search; snippets only for several items. Verify before publication.