GABLERIZING ERROR: “WANDERING ROCKS”

This essay investigates the treatment of error in Hans Walter Gabler’s Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition (1984), using the “Wandering Rocks” episode as a case study. It takes up the license contained in the etymology of the episode’s traditional appellation, focusing on “error” and its Latin root errorem (from errare) as “the action of roaming or wandering; hence a devious or winding course, a roving, winding” (OED). By exploring Gabler’s presentation of a “continuous manuscript text” as a form of wandering text and by comparing this with Joyce’s manipulations of space and time in “Wandering Rocks,” the essay argues that the episode’s transmissional lapses and chance slips, alongside its intentional errors, make for an important bridge between verisimilitude and linguistic playfulness in the novel.