A Feat of Strength in ?Ithaca?:Eugen Sandow and Physical Culture in Joyce'sUlysses

Abstract

This article on turn-of-the-twentieth-century physical culture in Ulysses analyses Joyce's fascination with and comical exploitation of modern medical discourses. While it regards body-building and the life story of the glamorous nineteenth-century strongman Eugen Sandow as important intertexts for the Ithaca episode, it draws on physical culture's connections to Zionism, racism and eugenics to explore how Joyce creatively used this pseudo-scientific discourse for the characterization of Leopold Bloom. Ithaca is identified as the episode where all these themes come to the fore. Generally regarded as the most scientific of all chapters in Ulysses, it formally adopts some central premises of the physical culture discourse: its obsession with form, shape and latent potential. Physical culture thus informs both form and content of Ulysses' most inquisitive section.