Michael Groden
August 1993
NOTES
[Praised as an epochal scholarly event and denounced as a scandal, the critical and synoptic edition of James JoyceТs Ulysses first published in 1984, together with the corrected text that was published separately in 1986, has received extraordinary publicity for a work of its kind.1 Its editing procedures have lifted the general public, students, literary critics, and scholarsЧthe vast majority of whom are not themselves editorsЧto a heightened awareness of textual editing. With readers now beginning to realize that editions should be scrutinized and assessed as carefully as interpretations have always been, users of the 1986 reading textЧwhich in this new printing remains available worldwideЧneed to be aware of how Hans Walter Gabler, supported by an international team of collaborators and advisors, arrived at its text and of how this edition resembles and also differs from others that might be produced. This is crucial now that the copyright protection for the first-edition text of Ulysses has expired in most of the world and will end soon in the United States, with the result that many editions are becoming available.] The list of References following this Afterword contains bibliographic details about all works mentioned in the text and about some other valuable studies of the edition.
[Gabler decided at the beginning of his work that traditional copytext methods would not work well for the textual situation that Ulysses presents. At least three factors led to this decision: the manuscript, which does provide a beginning-to-end version in JoyceТs hand, is too far removed from the extensively augmented text that Ulysses eventually became; the typescripts and proofs are steps along the way in the process of expansion; and the first edition is too filled with errors.2 Gabler looked to German genetic editing, which is oriented more towards authorial revision than towards transmissional corruption, and also to Fredson BowersТs work within the copytext-editing tradition on constructed, or what Gabler calls СvirtualТ, documents as copytext. Bowers demonstrated that a copytext can be a lost or virtual document when he edited Stephen CraneТs stories and Henry FieldingТs Tom Jones. In the case of Crane two surviving versions of a story that each descend directly from a lost original were used to recreate the lost original document, and the recreated document served as copytext. For Fielding the accidentals of one document (the first edition of Tom Jones) were merged with the substantives of another (the fourth edition), and this constructed hypothetical document became the copytext. In the implications of these examples Gabler saw a way of meeting the challenge of the complex textual situation presented by Ulysses. He reasoned that JoyceТs activity on the prepublication documents from the final working draft through to the final page proofsЧhis manuscript inscription plus all the additions to the typescript and proofsЧcan add up to a manuscript of the whole book, even though a virtual one. In one of the editionТs major innovations he reconstructs this virtual manuscript, calling it the Сcontinuous manuscriptТ of Ulysses, and uses it as the editionТs copytext.] Some critics have argued that the first edition can and should serve as the basis for an orthodox copytext edition of Ulysses. The claim can be assessed only when an edition of this kind is actually produced.
[Only after the continuous manuscript text was assembled did copytext editing come into play, as the continuous manuscript text was then emended, like any other copytext, as a result of the editorТs comparison of it to the other prepublication documents and to the few postpublication documents in which Joyce was involved (primarily errata lists that he helped to prepare and corrections for the 1937 reprint of the 1936 Bodley Head edition). Since most of the collation was done to construct the patterns of writing and revision in the continuous manuscript text in the first place, the copytext editing was largely confined to eliminating errors of transmission and to emending accidentals. Again, it was not done primarily to fulfill final authorial intentions.3 The copytext editing of the continuous manuscript text is indicated in the footnotes to the synoptic textЧthe presentation of the editorТs assembly of the continuous manuscript textЧin Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition.] Gabler has gone on to produce JoyceТs Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in more traditional copytext editions, but even there, as he explains in the Introduction to Portrait, he has resisted emending the copytext solely to fulfil final authorial intention.
[GablerТs loudest and most persistent critic, John Kidd, has since 1988 steadily and relentlessly attacked the edition. With a great deal of rhetorical flurry and a few oft-repeated examples, Kidd captured a great deal of attention. But all his pages of supposed analysis, and the sixty pages of tables and charts of GablerТs alleged errors and inconsistencies in his СInquiryТ into the edition, managed finally to demonstrate only two errorsЧmistranscriptions of the names СBullerТ at 5.560 and СThriftТ at 10.1259Чand to point to one reading that resulted from the editorТs inconsistency in following his editionТs own stated rules of procedure. The passage in questionЧdiscussed in GablerТs СNote on the TextТЧis at 16.1804-5: Сwas not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering afterТ should be Сwas not quite the same as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after.Т In this instance, the editorТs diminished attention to the rule of the invariant context and his mistaking of an authorial revision based on a transmission error for a mere correction led him astray. The items on KiddТs long lists can be checked individually and will possibly lead to exposure of other errors or debatable readings or decisions, but the tables are constructed so capriciously and idiosyncratically, with so little demonstrated understanding of GablerТs theoretical assumptions and procedures, and with no coherent or consistent indication of KiddТs own working assumptions that they can point to errors or misjudgments only by accident. KiddТs campaign forced a great deal of negative attention on this edition but has ultimately revealed very little at all about it. It is to be hoped that the kind of inquiry that McGann and other critics have called for can now come to the forefront.4] The above assessments of KiddТs attacks are elaborated in my СResponseТ to KiddТs СInquiryТ and in GablerТs СWhat Ulysses Requires.Т
REFERENCES
Gabler, Hans Walter. СAfterwordТ to James Joyce. Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Ed. Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1984. 3:1859-1907.
ЧЧЧЧ. СIntroductionТ to James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Gabler with Walter Hettche. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1933, pp. 1-18. Edited text reprinted, New York: Vintage, 1993.
ЧЧЧЧ. СOn Textual Criticism and Editing: The Case of JoyceТs Ulysses.Т Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities. Ed. George Bornstein and Ralph G. Williams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 195-224.
ЧЧЧЧ. СWhat Ulysses Requires.Т Papers† of the Bibliographical Society of America (forthcoming).
Goldman, Arnold. СJoyceТs Ulysses as Work in Progress: The Controversy and Its Implications.Т Journal of Modem Literature 15 (1989): 579-88.
Greetham. D. C. СThe Manifestation and Accommodation of Theory in Textual Editing.Т Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory. Ed. Philip Cohen. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1991, pp. 78-102.
Groden, Michael. СFoostering Over Those Changes: The New Ulysses.Т James Joyce Quarterly 22 (1985): 137-59.
ЧЧЧЧ. СA Response to John KiddТs СAn Inquiry Into Ulysses: The Corrected TextТ.Т James Joyce Quarterly 28 (1990): 81-110.
Joyce, James. Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. 3 vols. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1984.
Kidd, John. СAn Inquiry Into Ulysses: The Corrected Text.Т Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82 (1988): 411-584.
ЧЧЧЧ. СThe Scandal of Ulysses.Т New York Review of Books, June 30, 1988, pp. 32-39.
Mahaffey, Vicki. СIntentional Error: The Paradox of Editing JoyceТs Ulysses.Т Representing Modernist Texts: Editing as Interpretation. Ed. George Bornstein. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991, pp. 171-91.
McGann, Jerome J. СUlysses as a Postmodern Work.Т Social Values and Poetic Acts: The Historical Judgment of Literary Work. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 173-94. Reprinted from Criticism 27 (1985): 283-306.
Sandulescu, C. George, and Clive Hart, ed. Assessing the 1984 СUlysses.Т Gerrards Cross, Bucks: Colin Smythe, and Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1986.
СSpecial Issue on Editing Ulysses.Т Ed. Charles Rossman. Studies in the Novel 22 (Summer 1990).
СUlysses: The Text Ч The Debates of the Miami JТyce Conference.Т James Joyce Literary Supplement 3 (Fall 1989).
Michael Groden is Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of СUlyssesТ in Progress (Princeton University Press, 1977), general editor of The James Joyce Archive (63 volumes, Garland Publishing, 1977-79), compiler of James JoyceТs Manuscripts: An Index (Garland Publishing, 1980), and co-editor of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). He served as an adviser to Hans Walter Gabler on Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition.
