James Joyce: Language as a Problem

Abstract

James Joyce, who spent his entire life in voluntary exile, viewed English as the language of the conqueror, which had deprived Ireland of its native Gaelic. For Joyce, the language also became one of the problems which revealed itself both on the thematic level (Language is one of the many themes that his characters are concerned with and which is often debated in Dubliners, The Portrait of an Artist and Ulysses) and on the linguistic level where Joyce endeavors to push the possibilities of the language to its uttermost in Finnegans Wake, where Joyce attempts to create such a language where each signifier calls to mind numerous other connotations and gives innumerable possibilities for interpretation.