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The Plan (Chart or Schema) of Ulysses

This following chart, combining information given in the versions supplied by Joyce to Carlo Linati (in Italian; letter of 21 Sept.1920) and to Stuart Gilbert for his 1930 study, James Joyce’s Ulysses. It has been formatted for internet by Charles Cave - online [extinct at 28.05.2014] with small emendations by me [BS]. Richard Ellmann has given the authoritative account of Joyce’s Ulysses schemas in Joyce on the Liffey (1973), citing Linati, Gilbert and Valery Larbaud (late 1921) as prime recipients and mentioning unnamed others. The Linati Schema for Ulysses is held at the Lockwood Memorial Library (SUNY, Buffalo) as part of the Joyce Collection (V.A.1.a). The Gilbert schema appeared in James Joyce’s Ulysses (London: Faber & Faber, 1930, p.30 while Gilbert’s typed copy of the schema is held in the Harley K. Croessmann James Joyce Collection at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Note: It does not contain the ‘Correspondences’ in either version.]
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The Linati schema includes a column with the meaning (Senso, Significato) of the episodes - such as ‘Il figlio spodestato alla lotta’ and ‘La savvieza del vecchio mundo’ (“Telemachus”, “Nestor”) which Joyce later retracted. Linati never wrote the article requested by Joyce and returned the schema to him. Joyce, in turn, presented it to Sylvia Beach with an inscription dated 2 Feb. 1922 (V.a.1.b.1). Both are reproduced in Richard Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey (London: Faber & Faber 1973), p.186ff. - where the ‘Correspondences’ column given below is shown in Ellmann’s reproduction under the heading of 'Gilbert-Gorman Plan’ - which is to say, the Gorman schema since the photo of the original MS copy shown below indicates that no such column was included in the one given to Stuart Gilbert - presumably otherwise identical. Joyce insisted that all the recipients up to Gilbert remain silent about the schema, which Gilbert received permission to print for his 1930 study of Ulysses. Another composite version of the chart has been prepared by Jeri Johnson in her introduction to the Oxford University Press edition of Ulysses (OUP 2008)
 
The Schema in Images
Joyce’s Holograph Version (Gilbert) Gilbert’s Study of Ulysses (1931) Hugh Kenner’s Dublin’s Joyce (1955)

See also ..

“A Short Textual History of Ulysses”
 
See also Sam Slote, Catalogue Notes, SUNY Library (Buffalo) “Bloomsday” Centennial Exhibit, 2004 [online; 31.12.2008; defunct at 24.04.2022].

Titles Scene Hour Organ Art Colour Symbol Technic Correspondences
TELEMACHIAD
Telemachus The (Martello) Tower 8 a.m.   theology whitegold heir Narrative (young) Stephen: Telemachus, Hamlet; Buck Mulligan: Antinous; Milkwoman: Mentor
Nestor The School (Mr Deasy’s) 10 a.m.   history brown horse Catechism (personal) Deasy; Nestor; Pisistratus: Sargent; Helen: Mrs O’Shea
Proteus The Strand (Sandymount) 11 a.m.   philology green tide Monologue (male) Proteus: Primal Matter; Kevin Egan: Menelaus; Megapenthus : Cocklepicker
ODYSSEY
Calypso The House (7 Eccles St.) 8 a.m. kidney Home economics orange nymph Narrative (mature) Calypso: Nymph; Dlugacz: Recall; Zion: Ithaca
Lotus-Eaters The Bath (Turkish Baths) 10 a.m. genitals botany, chemistry white eucharist Narcissism Lotuseaters: Cabhorses, Communicants, Soldiers, Eunuchs, Bar, Watchers of Cricket
Hades The Graveyard (Prospect Cem., Glasnevin) 11 a.m. heart religion black caretaker Incubism Dodder, Grand and Royal Carnals, Liffey: 4 Rivers; Cunningham: Sisyphus; Far Coffet: Cerberus; Caretaker: Hades; Daniel O’Connell: Hercules; Dignam: Elpenor; Parnell: Agamemnon; Menton: Ajax
Aeolus The Newspaper (Freeman’s Journal; Even’g Telegraph 12 p.m. lungs rhetoric red editor Enthymemic Crawford: Aeolus; Incest: Journalism; Floating Island: Press
Lestrygonians The Lunch (Davy Byrne’s) 1 p.m. Oesophagus architecture   constables Peristalsis Antiphates: Hunger: Decoy: Food; Lestrygonians: Teeth
Scylla and Charybdis National Library 2 p.m. brain literature   Stratford, London Dialectic Rock: Aristotle, Dogma: Stratford; Whirlpool: Plato, Mysticism, London; Ulysses: Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare
Wandering Rocks Streets of Dublin 3 p.m. blood mechanics   citizens Labyrinth Bosphorus: Liffey; European bank: Viceroy; Asiatic bank: Conmee; Symplegades: Groups of Citizens
Sirens Concert Room (Ormond Hotel) 4 p.m. ear music   barmaids fuga per canonem Sirens: Barmaids; Isle: Bar
Cyclops Tavern (Barney Kiernan’s) 5 p.m. muscle politics   fenian Gigantism Noman: I; Stake: Cigar; Challenge: Apoptosis
Nausikaa Rocks (Sandymount Strand) 8 p.m. eye, nose painting grey,blue virgin Tumescence, Detumescence Phaeacia: Star of Sea; Gerty: Nausikaa
Oxen of Sun The Hospital (Nat. Maternity: Holles St. 10 p.m. womb medicine white mothers Embryonic development Hospital: Trinacria; Lampetie, Phaethusa: Burses; Helios: Horne; Oxen: fertility; Crime: Fraud
Circe The Brothel (Nighttown) 12
(midnight)
locomotor apparatus magic   whore Hallucination Circe: Bella
NOSTOS
Eumeus The Shelter (Cabman’s) 1 a.m. nerves navigation   sailors narrative (old) Eumeus: Skin Goar; Sailor: Ulysses Pseudangelos; Melanthius : Corley
Ithaca The House (7 Eccles St.) 2 a.m. skeleton science   comets catechism (impersonal) Eurymachus: Boylan;
Suitors:: scruples; Bow: reason
Penelope The Bed   flesh     earth monologue (female) Penelope: Earth; Web: Movement

James Joyce’s MS copy of his schema for Ulysses - given to Stuart Gilbert in c.1930.
Joyce’s original holograph version of the so-called “Gilbert Schema” - photo given at Patrick Hastings, The Guide to Ulysses - online [accessed 24.04.2022]

Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study [1930] (NY: Knopf Doubleday [Vintgage Books] 1955), p.30
Schema given in Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study, [2nd edn.] (Vintage Books 1955), p.30 (rep. in Michelle Hoban, “Molecules all change”: Memory, Mutability, and Ulysses as Body-Mind in “Scylla and Charybdis” [BA Hons thesis] (University of Michigan 2017), p.2. Note: Hoban also reproduces “The Gilbert Schema” from Jeri Johnson, ed. & intro., Ulysses (Oxford UP 2008), pp.734-35 which includes the ’Correspondences’ column (Hoban, op. cit., p.10; available online; accessed 24,04.2022).

The Plan of Ulysses as given in Hugh Kenner's Dublin’s Joyce (1955)
Plan given in Hugh Kenner, Dublin’s Joyce (1955); rep. in Nicholas A. Fargnoli & Michael Patrick Gillespie, Critical Companion to James Joyce: The Essential Reference to his Life and Work [rev. edn.] (NY: Facts on File 2006).


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