The Economy of Ulysses: Making Both Ends Meet

Mark Osteen

Syracuse University Press, 1995 - Ireland - 472 pages

This original and wide-ranging study explores the "economies" of Ulysses using a number of different critical and theoretical methods. Not only do the economic circumstances of the characters
form a significant part of the novel's realistic subject matter but the relationships between characters are also based upon modes of economic exchange. Moreover, the narrative itself is filled with economic terms that serve as tropes for its themes, events, and techniques.

Some of the subjects and topics covered include Joyce's own "spendthrift" background, gift exchanges and reciprocity as a fundamental means of reader/author relationship in the novel, money and language, Bloom as an "economic man," the "narrative economy" of "Wandering Rocks," the relationship between commerce and eroticism, the function of sacrifice in the creation of value, counterfeiting, forgery, and other crimes of writing, and a demonstration of how the
encounter between Stephen and Bloom "makes both ends meet." The book brings together not only the opposed economic impulses in Joyce but also the conflicting strains of regulation and excess in the novel's structural economy.

Contents

• Miser and Spendthrift: 1
• Dedalus Dispossessed: 35
• Economic Man: 70

About the author

Mark Osteen is an associate professor of English at Loyola College in Maryland and has published a number of articles on Joyce and twentieth-century literature.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Economy of Ulysses: Making Both Ends Meet; Irish studies; Utopianism and Communitarianism
• Author: Mark Osteen
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1995
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 10, 2008
• ISBN: 0815626533, 9780815626534
• Length: 472 pages