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Joyce's linguistic skepticism: the personal library as a cognitive toolbox

Abstract:
Joyce's literary project has been presented as a so-called "high modernist" apotheosis of language, the opposite of linguistic skepticism. But this retrospective way of framing Joyce is to a large extent part of the contrastive background, rebelliously created by the subsequent, "late modernist" generation. This essay investigates this not entirely fair framing by examining the hypothesis that Joyce may actually have been setting the agenda for the late-modernist enactment of language skepticism. The entrenched, Cartesian way of regarding literature as an outward expression of an "inner" propositional content of thought is replaced by another, post-Cartesian paradigm that sees language as a cognition-enhancing tool. Joyce was not a philosopher; he did not write about this phenomenon. Instead, his literature enacts it.
Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

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Publisher copy:
10.1353/jjq.2019.0105

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Division:
HUMS
Department:
English Faculty
Sub department:
English Faculty
Role:
Author


Publisher:
University of Tulsa
Journal:
James Joyce Quarterly More from this journal
Volume:
57
Issue:
1-2
Pages:
93-105
Publication date:
2020-06-12
Acceptance date:
2019-06-16
DOI:
EISSN:
1938-6036
ISSN:
0021-4183


Language:
English
Keywords:
Pubs id:
1120103
Local pid:
pubs:1120103
Deposit date:
2020-07-18

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