Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce: A Book Study

Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce: A Book Study

Garrett Shields 

San Jose State University

Prof. Elizabeth Wrenn-Estes

LIBR 280-12

April 24, 2013

 

 

 

TITLE
The title of this work is simply Ulysses, taking its name from the hero of The Odyssey, which this books alludes to in content and structure.

AUTHOR

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland which would be the scene of the great majority of his future literary works. As a young man, he was raised Catholic and attended Jesuit schools. Religion would be a tumultuous issue throughout his life and even after his death, for after an apparent break with his religion it became difficult for people to ascertain his feelings with his former faith, with many scholars examining his works, searching for clues in content and context (Segall, 1993, p. 160).

He first published Dubliners after dropping out of medical school and beginning his European travels that would punctuate his young life. Ulysses was originally conceived as a short story for Dubliners but Joyce did not include or even write it, and he would then spend the years of 1907-1914 writing and later publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a sort of fictionalized retelling of his experiences in Dublin. Only once that work was finished did he begin again on Ulysses which would not be published until 1922 after several moves around Europe where he took various odd jobs including teaching, banking, and others. 

 

His next novel, Finnegan's Wake, would not be published for 17 years in 1939. Joyce cited exhaustion after Ulysses, and did not write a line of prose for a year (Bulson, 2006, p. 14). With his ailing health, quickly deteriorating eyesight, and family troubles, Joyce was forced to rely on friends and backers to financially support him as well as physically write his prose as he dictated. In poor health, Joyce died on January 11, 1941. His work is cherished not only in Ireland where his image is memorialized in statues and on the currency, but worldwide in the celebration of Bloomsday on June 16, a reference to Leopold Bloom a character in his most renowned book Ulysses (University at Buffalo, 2012).

INTRODUCTION
Ulysses is an interesting book to study following our work looking at manuscripts.  With the invention of the printing press, works became more prevalent and widespread, but with this communicative and artistic blessing there were still imperfections.  This study will highlight the process of publishing the first edition of Ulysses, the people involved, the end result and how it fits into the context of the printing press and disseminating an author's work in the modern world.



CONTEXT 
This first edition of Ulysses has a storied history. Only 1000 were ever printed, of three separate formats, and none of them were legally sold in the United States at the time of printing. Upon its release in 1922, Ulysses had already been banned in the United States on obscenity charges stemming from its serialized release in the publication Little Review that was halted in 1920 when a description of masturbation was deemed indecent. Upon publication in France, some copies were smuggled in to the U.S., but even subsequent printings were frequently seized by customs officials until the book was first legally released stateside in 1933.

Ulysses is frequently regarded as one of, if not the most influential work of fiction of the twentieth century. The story of its controversy upon publication is almost as interesting as its process to publication. A highly experimental novel, Joyce played with words, their meaning, and how they fit together in sentences and on the page. His specificity and exactness are well noted, and his original handwritten proofs with corrections, a page of which is shown to the right, are dizzying. 

Only one of the French printers who worked on the first edition spoke English, but he made changes where he perceived mistakes; Joyce later went through and noted the errata, but several versions of this book were subsequently published with minor and major alterations in diction, spelling, punctuation, and layout.  (University at Buffalo, 2012).

As it stands, this is an important novel, not only in the realm of banned books but fiction in general. This extremely rare book is being fully scanned and digitized by The Modernist Versions Project, and will be completed soon, letting many more people experience this first version of a revolutionary work.

PRINTER
Maurice Darantiere, noted in his letterhead here as a “master printer of Dijon,” handled this first printing of Ulysses. He was suggested at Publisher Sylvia Beach's request due to his experience with printing experimental French fiction. This experience, made him an ideal candidate for printing such a unique work. Only one of Darantiere's typesetters knew English, but he unfortunately took it upon himself to “correct” aspects of the texts, many of which were caught and revised by Joyce, but only adding to the legacy of this flawed manuscript.

PUBLISHER

Sylvia Beach (pictured below, with Joyce) owned the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. which published the first edition of Ulysses on February, 2 1922, Joyce's birthday. 

 













PLACE OF PUBLICATION

This first edition of Ulysses was published in Paris, France at 12 Rue de l'Odeon at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore.  Not only was this the place of publication, but it served as the location of James Joyce's office at the time, as well as a refuge for several expatriate American authors such as Ernest Hemingway (Glass, 2009, p. 24).

TITLE PAGE
The title page for Ulysses is fairly complete listing the title, author, publisher, publisher's address, country and year of publication.

COLLATION PAPER AND WATERMARKS
As listed in the note after the title page, this first edition of Ulysses is printed on handmade linen paper and it contains no watermarks. There are other, rarer, versions printed on a quality Dutch handmade paper and verge d'Arche, a type of laid paper made in the French town of Arche.

INCIPIT

There is no specific incipit which is typical as this work does not fit under the description of being in cunabula.

EXPLICIT
There is, however, and definite ending to Ulysses which simply reads:

This reflects that it was written in the seven years following the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in these locales of Italy, Switzerland, and France.



COLOPHON
The colophon for Ulysses is found at the end of the work, and clearly states the publisher, printer, and location. (Pictured below, left.)  More information that is sometimes contained in a colophon is listed earlier, two pages after the title page, wherein the amount of copies produced and what kind of support each was produced on is listed as well as the number of the particular edition.  (Pictured below, right).  This particular edition, number 616, lets us know that it is printed on handmade paper.

PAGE LAYOUT
The prose Joyce laid out in Ulysses was very specific.  There are pages that look like bricks of text, with no breaks, like the one below.  The text appears to have a consistent measure of margin on all sides and is fully justified on complete lines.

This page is not representative of a simple layout though.  Throughout Ulysses, Joyce was very deliberate with the spacing and indentation of passages.  The page below shows how speech was noted in this edition, indented and following an m-dash.  We also see a song receiving extra spacing and italics to highlight its significance and difference.  The negative space it creates on the page seems intentional, meant to make the text flow, much like the previous example makes the text seem loaded, perhaps frantic.  Whatever the intentions, page layout plays an integral role in Ulysses, one that Joyce took pains to maintain--see the manuscript notes above to see that he designed the layout--and it is represented here dutifully.

FOLIATION AND PAGINATION

The foliation and exact dimensions of this first edition were also not as easy to determine as one might imagine. Several auction websites—this book goes for tens of thousands at least—list the foliation for this handmade paper edition as arranged in quartos, where one sheet is printed with four pages printed on each side then folded twice, producing eight pages (Manhattan Rare Book Company). 

 

AbeBooks.com, another dealer in rare books, lists the leaf size of this particular edition at 183 by 235 mm, one of the only mentions I've seen of measurements for this edition anywhere.

The pagination of this book is in the upper, outer edge of each page as seen here.

When a new episode, or chapter, starts, the page number is omitted but resumes on the next page as seen below.

PRINTER'S TYPE

The colophon of this edition does not include any description of the typeface. From a quick glance, the font is a serif and very similar to Times New Roman. The question of this edition's typeface is asked by several users online, and the best answers I've seen proposed were for fonts created after the printing of this version, and therefore iterative of whatever font this actually is.

COLOR PRINTING
Only black ink has been used; there is no color printing.



RUBRICATION
Ulysses lacks any instance of rubrication, fitting for the time and place in which it was printed as well as the obfuscatory nature of the narration.



DECORATION, ILLUMINATION, AND PAINTING
There is no decoration, illumination, or painting in Ulysses.  The closest thing to visual artwork is the creative layout of some sections.



BINDING
Sadly, I was not able to handle this book to inspect the binding.  Of the 1000 copies produced in 1922, most are in the hands of collectors, some are lost, and most obviously, it is extremely rare.  Exact details on the binding are hard to find, but the picture below, of a damaged first edition shows a simple cardboard cover to which the endleaves visible in the scans are likely pasted down. 

The University of Buffalo notes that this cardboard binding may not be universal, but merely a common practice, stating that, "As was typical for some deluxe French volumes, the 'cover' for Ulysses was actually a wrapper which could be used as a kind of dust-jacket once the buyer had the book bound at their own expense. This arrangement proved to be confusing for English and American reviewers unfamiliar with this Gallic practice and many simply assumed that the binding was shoddy."  This may also be why this American student is having so much trouble determining the binding of this first edition.



ENDLEAVES AND FLYLEAVES
The differing supports that this first edition was published upon, coupled with the flimsy paper wrapper that covered the binding has cause several of the copies of this first edition that remain to be rebound or collected in some other format, making it difficult to determine the binding of this edition, even with extensive searching. Descriptions of the version printed on “handmade paper” though, are sometimes labeled as having marbled boards to which the endleaves are pasted down. Scans of the endleaf are not very clear, but are included below.

The bluish cover that is seen at the top of this blog post is actually a thick piece of paper, a wrapper, that has been folded down into the endleaf on this particular version. The wrapper itself is simple, with the title and author on the front. The colors are meant to be a Greek blue and white, which Joyce always considered lucky.

CONCLUSION

This first edition of Ulysses is rare monument in an evolving work, and it earns the claim to be one the most important piece of literature in the twentieth century.  In our previous manuscript studies, it was interesting to note how presentation affected or altered the meaning of a work, how a scribe in their meticulous fashion had a hand in creating the work. The author was not the sole creator. 

 

With the creation of the printing press and author involvement in publishing process, especially in the case of Ulysses and James Joyce, one may think that the author would have regained more autonomy in the creation his work. But typesetters and printers altered this first work, accidentally and because they thought they were correcting mistakes that Joyce, in fact, intended. Joyce found hundreds of errors and noted them. Others noted more.

One would expect the printing press to cause works such as this to proliferate, but a litigious, imposed morality still stifled it. Subsequent printings of this book were seized by port officials and customs officers in the United States and London.

The printing press is just one more step in the direction where authors can express themselves, in their vision with a larger audience. It is merely one technology that pushes that ideal forward, but it is not without its drawbacks or imperfections.

Ulysses is not only a seminal work of fiction, but it tells a larger story of how books fit into different cultures, how publishing is an imperfect technology that enriches an authors power, and ultimately how difficult it is to conceive a “definitive” version of a complicated or iterated work.

REFERENCES

Bulson, E. (2006). The Cambridge introduction to James Joyce. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Charles, G. (2009). Americans in Paris: Life and death under nazi occupation. London: Harper Collins.

First edition of Ulysses by James Joyce in original wrappers. (2012). The Manhattan Rare Book Company. Retrieved from http://www.theworldsgreatbooks.com/ulysses_wraps.htm

Joyce, J. (1922). Ulysses [Digitized version]. Retrieved from http://web.uvic.ca/~mvp1922/portfolio/texts/

McKinney, K. (2012, January 24). Before and after: “Ulysses” page proofs [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/culturalcompass/2012/01/24/before-and-after-ulysses-page-proofs/

Mulder, M. (2011, June 10). Rare book of the month: Ulysses, by James Joyce (1922) [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://zsr.wfu.edu/special/blog/rare-book-of-the-month-ulysses-by-james-joyce-1922/

Segall, J. (1993). Joyce in America: Cultural politics and the trials of Ulysses. Berkeley, CA. University of California Press

Ulysses – first edition. (2013). Bauman Rare Books. Retrieved from http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/joyce-james/ulysses/83781.aspx

Ulysses by Joyce, James: Paris: Shakespeare and Company hardcover, 1. Auflage – YGRbookS. (2013). AbeBooks.com. Retrieved from http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8850437423&searchurl=an%3Djoyce%26bsi%3D0%26ds%3D30%26fe%3Don%26sortby%3D1%26tn%3Dulysses

University at Buffalo. (2012). A centennial Bloomsday at Buffalo. Retrieved from http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/exhibits/joycebloomsday/

 

Walters 143 Roman de la Rose Manuscript Study

 

 

Study of Walters 143 Manuscript of the Roman de la Rose 

Garrett Shields 

San Jose State University

Prof. Elizabeth Wrenn-Estes

LIBR 280-12

March 5, 2012

 

 Table of Contents

Introduction

Context

Authors

Incipit

Explicit

Colophon

Size

Binding

Writing Support

Collation and Layout

Scripts, Scribes, and Ink

Rubrication

Decoration and Painting

Illumination

Summary

References

Introduction

The Roman de la Rose, or translated from the French, the Romance of the Rose is an important work of medieval literature as well as rich source for those involved in manuscript studies. Depending on sources, there are between 200 and 300 different manuscripts available of Roman de la Rose ranging from the 13^th to 15^th centuries, including one with critical essays, “possibly the first truly ''critical edition" of a medieval vernacular text ever produced (Brownlee, 1992, p. 1). Originally a French work, it quickly spread to influence other works of the time. It was a secular work that found its way into monasteries. (That heritage will be seen below in some additional illustrations made to this particular manuscript.)

Roman de la Rose can be controversial and divisive, which may account for its popularity. This comes from the fact that it was written by two authors, working independently from one another with different motivations at different times. The first 4058 lines were written by Guillaume de Lorris around 1230, and Jean de Meun constructed a second part consisting of 17,724 lines that was finished around 1275.

Walters (2012) describes Guillaume de Lorris's part of Roman de la Rose is an “idealized conception of the love quest.” It is a poem in which a young man, stricken by an arrow from the God of Love, pursues his love Rose who is walled off. After stealing a kiss, his Rose is placed under further protection and de Lorris' part of the Roman concludes. In this part, Rose is clearly an allegory for sexuality, purity, and fragility, something that McCaffrey describes as an “ idealized version of the love object.”

This idealization is central to de Lorris's contribution to the Roman. The controversy and much interest in this work is created by the juxtaposition of Jean de Meun's additional lines in which our protagonist is “more courtly, more extreme, and more foolish” and characters are far less idealized (McCaffrey). The story concludes with “a bawdy account of the plucking of the Rose, achieved through deception” (Walters).

The Roman de la Rose, existing prolifically in manuscripts, is an important subject for manuscript studies. Walters 143 Roman de la Rose, examined here, is one of perhaps 20 Roman manuscripts believed to be illustrated by Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston. Those illustrations, along with the work of the unknown scribe will be examined more fully below. Hopefully, part of what makes the Roman de la Rose so long-lasting and complex will be conveyed through this examination.

Context

In the period of about fifty years that the Roman de la Rose was written France was in the midst of the Crusades, but it was otherwise, under the rule of Louis IX the political climate was calm if not liturgical; after all Louis IX becomes Saint Louis. Guillaume de Lorris wrote in this time, and perhaps his romantic and chaste love story is a reflection of the time in which he lived.

After Louis IX, Phillip III came into power, was quickly killed in the Crusades, and was succeeded by Phillip IV. Around this time, Jean de Meun was authoring his bawdier continuation to Roman de la Rose. This could be seen as a reaction to the religious overtones permeating much of the country's affairs. That de Meun introduces a satirical element into this story, and that he undermines some of the romantic aspects of de Lorris's previous work could indicate that there was room for a different way of thinking in France.

This sentiment may be evidenced in the manuscript itself, by a few alterations and additions that made their way in over the centuries. On 69v, shown below on the left, a painting has been altered to show what appears to be a Dominican friar embracing a woman in a romantic way. Further, on 72v, a dog dressed as a Dominican friar leading a pack of dogs. 

 This anti-religious sentiment may have been added by some satirical spirit similar to de Meun, but it assuredly shows that this manuscript was read by several kinds of people. Perhaps that lends credibility to fact that this manuscript is one of hundreds that still exist of this text, that it has retained its popularity throughout the centuries.

Authors

Not much is known about about Guillaume de Lorris, but an inscription on the opening flyleaf gives about as much information as anybody knows.

This translates, roughly, to “The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris started and completed by Jean de Meun. Guillaume de Lorris died in 1260 and Jean de Meun completed after 40 years. Guillaume de Lorris lived during the reign of St. Louis and Jean de Meun under Philip the Fair.”

Essentially, the timeframe de Lorris wrote this in was known, but even his death in 1260 is disputable. (Guillaume, 2011). The Roman de la Rose provides little temporal context as well. The story is essentially archetypal, a Genesis-type story that takes place in a dream, further making a date of authorship complicated.

More is known about Jean de Meun in comparison. He was believed to have lived from around 1240 – 1305, and his writing of his part of the Roman, with its vernacular context, vulgarities, and satirical qualities suggest that it was written in the latter part of the 13^th century.

Incipit

There appears to be no Incipit, or text marking by the scribe “here begins” as Alvin (1991) remarks is commonplace amongst manuscripts in this period (p. 221). The first page can be seen here, ornately illustrated. Perhaps that is one reason for the lack of incipit; with a work so popular and well known, it was perhaps deemed unnecessary. 

 

Explicit

Similarly, there is no Explicit or Finit, presumably for the same reasons.

Colophon

After examining the manuscript, it appears there is no colophon present in this work either. Clemens and Graham (2007) note that “only a relatively small proportion of medieval manuscripts include such colophons,” and were “more popular at certain times and places: for example, among early medieval Irish and Spanish scribes and among Italian humanist scribes” (p.117). Since this manuscript of Roman de la Rose is neither, it is not unusual for it to be lacking a colophon.

Size

The manuscript measures 300mm, or almost one foot in height, and measuring from the center of the spine to the edge is 235mm, or about 9.25 inches. The parchment itself measures slightly smaller, of course, being 289mm tall and 205mm wide.


Binding

Unfortunately, I was not able to handle this manuscript in person.  There do not appear to exist any images of the binding or anything other than scanned pages.  Because of this, I am forced to rely on the description as listed from Roman de la Rose (romandelarose.org), which follows:

 

Brown leather, probably sheepskin, rectangular boards, five raised bands on spine (partially recessed), headband and tailband of white thread. Front and back covers have simple frame consisting of single blind-tooled fillet. Spine features gold-tooled designs, now badly faded/deteriorated and hard to make out, in the first and third through sixth compartments. At both top and bottom of spine, two simple blind-stamped lines. In second compartment, red leather title label with two gold-tooled lines each at top and bottom of compartment, and the following title: LE ROMAN / DE / LA ROSE. Fore, top, and bottom edges marbled in red, now quite faded. One paper flyleaf each, front and back; other half of each bifolium used as pastedown in front and back.

Writing Support

This manuscript of Roman is written on parchment, which is common for the time it was written. The parchment is in good condition, given its age, but it is browning and has a few signs of wear. On the first page, there are wormholes that have been repaired, but there are also small tears in the paste down, exhibited below.

The other large compromise to the structural integrity of this manuscript is the rip that runs the length in folio 143 that has been lost, and replaced by a later scribe, the only evidence of a different scribe in the manuscript.

Collation and Layout

The Walters 143 manuscript is collated into eight quires, each consisting of eight leaves. The layout is consistent, in a light brown ink. There are 8 vertical lines—shown below, on a particularly prominent page—that divide the page into two columns of text. 

Within each of the columns, there are two more lines that separate the first letter of each word with the rest of the line. There is also horizontal line in brown ink to delineate a header, but there is no distinction for a bottom border. Horizontal lines are also used for each line of the poem, but do not extend beyond.

Scripts, Scribes, and Ink

Textualis, which was the most common script in France at this time for manuscripts, is used throughout Roman de la Rose. One scribe is believed to have created this manuscript originally, due to the consistency in lettering a color. A brown ink was used by this scribe, and the few irregularities are marked in a black ink, added by a different scribe. There are a few instances of this, most notably on folio 143—pictured previously--where the page tore away vertically and parchment was reattached with writing by a different scribe. Another instance of this is seen on 50r, pictured above, where corrections were made with black ink at a later time by a different scribe.

 

In addition, there are strikethoughs across entire columns on 30v and 31r, but it does not seem clear why the original scribe did this, or if he were the one to do it.

 

Rubrication

The rubricator of this manuscript appears to be the same scribe to worked on the rest of the manuscript, and in tradition, red ink has been used to mark changes in the speaker or textual divisions as seen below. The ink has maintained its color pretty well throughout time, compared to others that seem to fade and become indistinguishable from the main script (Clemens & Graham, 2007, p. 25).

Decoration

There is much ornamentation throughout the Roman de la Rose, but not more so than on folio 1r, shown here.

Several different color inks are used including red, blue, black, white, green, purple, and orange. This piece contains ornate work, representations of scenes in the story, portraits of characters bordering the script and wrapped in vines. It is very decorative, and these flourishes are present throughout the text as well. There are 41 more illustrations like this throughout the manuscript, but they are smaller pieces, like the one pictured below.

Illumination

After checking all of the painting, decoration, and script, it is determined that this manuscript contains no illumination as it would surely be evident in some of the ornate painting like on folio 1r if it were there.

Summary

The Walters 143 Roman de la Rose is an impressively complete manuscript from the 13^th century. It is a very helpful study for one beginning to examine manuscripts because it was created in such a singular fashion, in scribe, script, and format. This uniformity is enlivened by the disparities that occur, like the odd strikethroughs, the torn parchment and amended page, and the corrections made by another scribe in a different ink. The damage done to the manuscript is light, considering its age, with several of the paintings and details retaining much of their luster. This manuscript is not only helpful to the student, but the appreciator of history and fine art.

References

Arvin, L. (1991). Scribes, script and books:The book arts from antiquity to the renaissance. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Brownlee, K. (1992). Rethinking The Romance of the Rose :Text, image, reception [eBook version]. Retrieved from http://www.ebscohost.com

Clemens, R., & Graham, T. (2007). Introduction to manuscript studies. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Guillaume de Lorris. (2011). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1. Retrieved from http://www.ebscohost.com

McCaffrey, P. (1999). Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Muen: Narcissus and Pygmalion. Romanic Review, 90(4), 435. Retrieved from http://www.ebscohost.com

Walters, L. (2012). History and summary of the text. Roman de la Rose. Retrieved from http://romandelarose.org/#rose