The Stylometry of Cliché Density and Character in James Joyce’s Ulysses

I’ve demonstrated, in an article that appeared in JADT 2010, that the “Eumaeus ” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses is almost entirely composed of clichés, with the Odysseus character, Leopold Bloom, producing nearly 2600 of them, as my database shows. But what about the other main characters, like Bloom’s wife Molly, in her famous going-to-sleep monologue after midnight, when she reviews her amorous life and recent infidelity? What of the young university graduate Stephen Daedalus, lyric and aesthetic in sensibility? What about Gerty McDowell, the Nausikaa figure in the novel, the young woman who reads too many romantic novels and has acquired her phraseology therein? This textometric and stylometric study establishes cliche densities for the stream-of-consciousness of each of these main characters, including Bloom, with startling results—Bloom and Gerty MacDowell speak from large repertoires of cliche, inviting us to read them naturalistically, which is to say comically and ironically, in this comic novel. Molly uses them far less, and emerges as a realistic character, one of substance and individuated voice compared to Bloom and Gerty. Stephen alone uses virtually none whatsoever. His language is almost entirely original, often unprecedented, and in accord with his project to escape the paralyzing culture, linguistic and otherwise, of Dublin. This quantitative approach lets us see into the heart of Joyce’s art, and into one of the sources for its extraordinary appeal