Abstract

James Joyce lived in the Habsburg port of Trieste during the twilight years of the Empire. During this period he completed Dubliners , wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and began writing Ulysses . Trieste, like many cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (e.g., Prague and Budapest) felt the effect of a theoretical crisis that had taken root in Vienna, and owing mostly to political and cultural circumstances it manifested itself throughout the Empire. This study examines the discourse of language critique that flourished during that period in Austrian philosophy and literature to make a case for an interpretation of Joyce as an artist who work resonates with this discourse. Language critique was anti-metaphysical, stressed the historicity of language, drew limits to what could be said and relegated what was beyond those perceived limits to the ineffable. Parallel to this skepticism the critical modernism of Vienna condemned the ornament and imitation that was characteristic of Viennese art and life. In this atmosphere of linguistic skepticism literature was not impoverished but on the contrary was exalted as the only viable means through which ethics could be communicated. Epiphany, in the Joycean sense, was a central theme among these writers, who navigated their works between the Scylla of positivism and the Charybdis of mystical silence in response to the epistemological demand of language critique.