Lexis as Census: James Joyce and Gertrude Stein's Approaches to the Peopling of Ulysses and The Making of Americans

This essay compares James Joyce's approach to the peopling of Ulysses with Gertrude Stein's approach to the same throughout The Making of Americans. Both authors aspire towards an encyclopedic rendering of totality in these novels. This article contrasts their approaches towards literary encyclopedism, arguing that their different methods reflect not only their divergent aesthetics, but also their respective understanding of what constitutes verisimilitude and total description in language. The article focuses on their attempts at representing large quantities of peoples in a verisimilar manner, arguing that in the case of both authors, the encyclopedic rendering of masses of peoples is intimately linked to feats of lexical innovation, establishing a link between lexis and census in the work of both authors. Whereas Joyce sought to represent the city and peoples of Dublin in 1904 in a manner that had a semblance of verisimilitude because of the use of real people and place names extracted from Thom's directory, Stein's aim in The Making of Americans was nothing less than the recording of the history all peoples, a feat largely attempted through the complex manipulation of pronouns. More broadly, the article argues for Stein's inclusion in the nexus of artists associated with Joyce (and vice versa) by disassembling the lacuna that exists between Joyce, Stein and their writings. It is an interventionist study that (re)introduces Stein's writings to Joyceans and argues that her work is not only highly relevant to Joyce's own, but that they share many similarities and aesthetic aspirations. The essay argues that the current lacuna in comparative studies of these two giants of modernism is a fallout from the animosity Joyce and Stein fostered for each other throughout their lifetimes.