James Joyce and Square Engineering

This paper is about Squaring and Boxes in Joyce’s Ulysses. It is driven by Joyce's multiple structural and literal representations of squares in Ulysses, such as Bloom trying to square the circle to the square full stop at the end of the Ithaca chapter, which Joyce calls a ‘mathematical catechism’. The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses states '■ The final punctuation mark has been the subject of much dispute.' However it doesn’t say any more than that. This talk continues that 'dispute' and places the square into a greater historical, mathematical, scientific and artistic context than it has previously taken place. There is a long tradition of squaring, from the ancient Greek Polybius alphabet squares of antiquity, to the magic number squares of Durer in the medieval period, to Hansjorg Mayer's art squares of the 1960s. This paper is about the how the square period in those first editions relates to the rest of Joyce's work, such as in Finnegans Wake: I placed Joyce amongst other artistic engineers including Byron, Shelley, James Smetham, and Stevenson. I will argue for the book as a machine that does certain kinds of work, for Shelley it was the notion of revolutionary change; for Joyce it is aesthetic work to become 'the greatest of engineers'.