In the Argument of UlyssesThe enigma of James Joyce's Ulysses remains, and the difficulty is far more fundamental than the considerable amount of material written about the novel would suggest. From its publication, books and articles have been written discussing its stylistic singularities, its patterns of allusion, and its various complexes of symbolic meaning. There exists, however, no general agreement about that which would ordinarily be regarded as an antecedent, even a