"I am other I now": Identity, Intertextuality, and Networks of Debt in Ulysses

Abstract

Abstract: Scholars acknowledge the significance of economics to James Joyce's Ulysses , but few have noted the pervasive significance of debt to the novel. Debt functions metaphorically as well as literally to organize competing networks of relationships within the novel. Using Caroline Levine's theory of forms to analyze the affordances of three such networks—financial debt, familial obligation, and duty to nation—provides a motivation for Stephen Dedalus's idiosyncratic financial decisions throughout the novel. Stephen's embrace of financial debt, while rejecting duty to family or country, reflects his desire for flexible relational modes, which afford greater self-determination. His quest for flexible networks of identity and relationship meets with ambiguous success. By contrast, Ulysses itself models a mode of intertextual debt that permits artistic self-creation.