Squaring the Circle
This chapter highlights the practical and metaphysical issues which James Joyce associates with the application of Euclidean geometry as a geo-meter (a measure of the Earth) in “Ithaca.” It demonstrates how the “mathematical catechism” of “Ithaca” geometrizes the visible world, translating natural phenomena into their ideal Euclidean equivalents. In a topographical context, it illustrates how variably curved surfaces undergo a process of rectification as they are mediated by the catechetical narrative, and how this leads to a confusion between maps and their territories. In light of the narrative’s conceptualization of Molly Bloom as both a human and a heavenly body, this chapter also examines the mythical notions which originate from the mathematical catechism’s conflation of geometric objects and the visible world. By evoking an incongruity between visual objects and their meters, it argues, Joyce explores the possible limits of squaring the circle, both topographically (in terms of projecting a curved natural surface onto a two-dimensional map, as in Mercator’s projection) and figuratively (in the sense that the irregularly curved features of the natural world are rectified as they are represented textually on a rectilinear page).