“Amtsadam, sir, to you! Eternest cittas, heil! Here we are again! I am bubub brought up under a camel act of dynasties long out of print, the first of Shitric Shilkanbeard (or is it Owllaugh MacAuscullpth the Thord?), but, in pontofacts massimust, I am known throughout the world wherever my good Allenglisches Angleslachsen is spoken” (FW, 532. 6–11). This chapter will take its point of depature here, in the evocation of a city which could be Amsterdam, Paris, or Dublin, at any rate the “capital” needed by Joyce in order to write his universal history. I wish to address the complex manner in which Joyce would rebuild his Dublin so as to enlarge it and promote it to the status of world capital while also denouncing it for the ruthless colonial and capitalist exploitation this entailed. Joyce's ambivalence toward his city is therefore identical to his perception of its “hospitality” – a dangerous hospitality for sure, but absolutely central to his linguistic mechanism.

We are thus right at the beginning of the “Haveth Childers Everywhere” section in iii, 3, a passage that was published independently and which has often been studied by Joyceans precisely because the composition method appears clearly even while the author's intentions have been variously appreciated.