This powerful and unusual study examines the relations between the textual organization of Ulysses and the notions of time, language, and poetics implicit in the novel. Making use of recent developments in philosophy and literary theory, Udaya Kumar takes issue with those who, like Richard Ellmann, see Ulysses as a fully coherent text. Instead, he argues that the novel is a complex transitional text involving various degrees of mediation between opposing impulses such as naturalism and schematism, unification and detotalization.

The book begins with an examination of the pervasive use of repetition in Ulysses and shows that this results in a disruption of linear time and creates a `textual memory'. This argument is further developed in relation to the question of time and the sign, where Ulysses is shown to display a differentiated and heterogeneous temporal experience. Finally, examining Joyce's early theories, it is argued that Ulysses implies a radical notion of tradition as the site of difference and of the work of art as the reperformance of elements from tradition. The concluding chapter clarifies this idea in relation to other strands in modernism and postmodernism.