On October 15, 2023 (Sunday), the Research Center for Textual Scholarship held an event in Classroom 321 of Building No. 3 of Seijo University. The event featured a lecture by Professor Hans Walter Gabler titled “Resurrection of Love, Its Trajectory: Discussing the Significance of Gabler’s Edition of ‘Ulysses’ Today”. Last year, James Joyce’s “Ulysses” celebrated its 100th anniversary since its first publication. This event included a workshop for Japanese researchers on Gabler’s edition of “Ulysses”, which is widely used in Joyce studies, and a Zoom lecture by the editor, Professor Gabler himself. About 50 people participated on the day, and both the workshop and the lecture saw active participation from the audience.

First, in the workshop, we were honoured to have Professor Kazuo Yokouchi (Kwansei Gakuin University) and Professor Yoshimi Minamitani (Associate Professor at Kyoto University) speak about the specific editing methods of Gabler’s edition of “Ulysses” and its historical position in research following its publication. Professor Yokouchi talked about how to interpret the three-volume Gabler edition of “Ulysses”, explaining in detail Joyce’s writing process from drafts to typescripts and proofs, and how various textual variants that arose during the writing process and after publication are presented in Gabler’s edition. This was done while closely examining the various symbols attached to the text and the Textual Notes and Historical Collation included in the third volume. Following this, Professor Minamitani discussed the controversies that arose after the publication of Gabler’s edition, in light of the publication history of “Ulysses”, focusing on the love passage restored in the text in the ninth episode (“Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. […]”). The workshop confirmed that the essence of Gabler’s editing lies in the abundant “materials” showing the text’s generation process and textual variants and that this editing, while conflicting with existing interpretations of the work, opened up new possibilities for reading, thus confirming the editorial and historical significance of Gabler’s edition.