from Don Gifford*, "Ulysses" Annotated, page xvi:"Several compromises suggest themselves here: one is to accept an interrupted reading and to follow it with an uninterrupted reading; another is to read through a sequence of the notes before reading the annotated sequence in the novel. Perhaps the best compromise would be to skim a sequence of notes, then to read the annotated sequence in the novel with interruptions for consideration of those notes that seem crucial, and then to follow with an uninterrupted reading of the sequence in the novel."
from Traugott Lawler*, "Medieval Annotation," page 97:"Perhaps the central question to ask, before we start annotating a text, is whether the text itself embodies an attitude to annotation."
Ulysses is an excellent test case of Traugott Lawler's* suggestion that an annotator should always ask "whether the text itself embodies an attitude to annotation." Texts are exhibited throughout Ulysses, and its characters respond to, comment on, even actually annotate texts. An entire chapter features Stephen Dedalus's theory of Hamlet, in which Stephen interprets detail after detail in Hamlet and Shakespeare's other works in the light of biographical information. Less loftily and less aggressively, Leopold Bloom annotates an ad for Alexander Keyes, Tea, Wine, and Spirit Merchant as he talks to the editor of the Evening Telegraph about placing the ad in the newspaper. And the newspaper editor recounts how a Dublin newsman cabled classified information about a local murder to a New York newspaper by providing an elaborate annotation of an ad which his New York colleague had in front of him.
In many different ways, then, Ulysses is a work in which texts exist to be commented on and to be annotated. Because so much information in the book is obscure – Dublin details from 1904, specific information from Irish history, allusions to popular culture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, references to Homer's Odyssey and phrases in Latin and Greek (which maybe readers of Ulysses could have been expected to know when the book was published in 1922 but which are increasingly beyond the experience of its readers now) – readers have often looked for help in annotations, and such information has been provided for them.
Four collections of annotations exist. Two are book-length: Weldon Thornton's* Allusions in "Ulysses" (1968) and Don Gifford's* "Ulysses" Annotated (1988). The other two are editions of Ulysses, the Oxford World's Classics paperback with notes by Jeri Johnson* and the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Annotated Student's Edition with notes by Declan Kiberd* (neither one available in the US), both of which offer endnotes to accompany the text.
All these notes have proven both useful and frustrating. In different ways, they provide much valuable information and leave a great deal out that a reader might want, they make mistakes along with providing reliable information, they mix interpretation with more factual details. To use them, a reader must either keep a separate book next to Ulysses or flip to the back of a large paperback. The annotations in the Ulysses editions are, understandably, aimed at students and provide the kinds of information that beginning readers probably need and want. The Thornton and Gifford books provide information that more advanced readers as well as beginners might look for.
These annotators necessarily take a pragmatic approach: they have a job to do, and they set out to do it. They don't worry much about the relationship of the notes to the text (although Gifford offers the bizarre suggestion that a reader might want to look at his notes first and then turn to Ulysses). But, as soon as the medium changes, and especially when, as in a hypermedia presentation, the notes can begin to occupy the same visual space as the text, such questions have to be addressed.
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Ulysses as a Text to Annotate
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