"A series originating in and repeated to infinity": Identity, Relations, and the Fractal Imagination of "Ithaca"

Previous studies of the role of science and mathematics in Ulysses, and specifically in "Ithaca," have identified a cluster of scientific and mathematical motifs, ranging from infinite series, set theory, non-Euclidean geometry, scientific indeterminacy, and even chaos theory, that signal Joyce's close interest in the cutting-edge physical and mathematical issues of his day. Though many of the individual hints of Joyce's mathematical libido have been thoroughly explored to both deconstructive and, more recently, structuralist effect in the critical literature, however, a holistic formal model for the mathematics of "Ithaca" has surprisingly not yet emerged. This essay posits the mathematical fractal as a major structural motif for the literary and ethical preoccupations of Ulysses that come to a formal climax in the quantitative poetics of "Ithaca." In its housing of both the formal unity and local irregularity of self-similar patterns that emerge in naturally occurring phenomena, the fractal provides a unique structure by which to illumine Joyce's narrative quest to accommodate within the structural framework of Ulysses the antinomies of both radical individualism and universal connection to other subjectivities across the indeterminate zones of human being that define for Joyce new, modern(ist) relations to self, other, and the world.