Derived from Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, this fresco, usually attributed to Andrea di Bonaiuto, personifies the earthly sciences – or Liberal Arts – as women: Joyce begins “The Study of Languages” with an allusion to Lippo Memmi’s allegory of “the seven earthly Sciences” in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence ( Figure 12.1). Since mathematics and science formed the core of the revised Jesuit curriculum, 1 Joyce’s qualified defence of literature might be read as an ironic show of deference towards his masters’ pedagogical principles, but it would be misleading to suppose that Joyce is ironically inverting the roles of literature and mathematics, because from the opening lines of the essay, he undermines the distinction between them. In his early essay, “The Study of Languages” (c.1898–99), Joyce stresses that “the most important study for the mind is Mathematics”: his “vindication of Literature will never venture to put it before Mathematics in that respect” ( CW 26–27). These sources, and the way Joyce introduced the sigla into the published text, suggest that both the art and the logic of Joyce’s “Doodles family” are informed by mathematical philosophy.

Ogden compares the language of the Wake to formal logic. Joyce drew on Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919) for “Nightlessons”, and in Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (1929), where the “triangle” section of ii.2 was first published, C.K. For instance, hce’s siglum, as it appears on FW 36.16 (“∃!”), is identical to Russell’s non-empty set, a forerunner of the existential quantifier alp’s delta (Δ) is a common mathematical symbol and Issy’s siglum, in two of its aspects (⊢,⊥), represents, respectively, Frege’s assertion sign and Peirce’s notation for nor. However, the resemblance between Joyce’s sigla and the symbols of formal logic has not been noted. Since Roland McHugh’s Sigla of Finnegans Wake, the symbols Joyce developed to refer to his protean and manifold characters have often been regarded as a key to the novel. This paper considers the doodles in the “Nightlessons” chapter of Finnegans Wake, such as the geometrical figure on page 293, the childish drawings that close the chapter, and Issy’s “Doodles family” footnote ( FW 299 F4).

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