ABSTRACT
This central episode of Joyce’s book, built of nineteen short sections, is both an entr’acte between the two halves and a miniature of the whole. It is a small-scale labyrinth within which most of the characters of Ulysses appear, moving about Dublin between the hours of three and four. Their movements are set against the background of two journeys by the representatives of ecclesiastical and civil authority respectively—that of Fr Conmee (section I) and that of the Earl of Dudley (section XIX). Links and cross-references between the various sections abound. Frank Budgen (James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses) tells us that ‘Joyce wrote the Wandering Rocks with a map of Dublin before him on which were traced in red ink the paths of the Earl of Dudley and Father Conmee. He calculated to a minute the time necessary for his characters to cover a given distance of the city.’
