“Pollyfool Fiansees”? Migration, Identity, and the Evolution of James Joyce’s Translingualism

Abstract

The idea that Joyce’s multilingual experimentations and translational writing style are a reflection of his exposure to linguistic diversity during his voluntary exile has already been advanced by Italian scholar Serenella Zanotti (2013). This article expands on this observation and highlights the fact that the Irish author’s real-life multilingualism was never static. Rather, Joyce’s multilingual and translingual experience constantly evolved throughout his life as a three-times migrant to cosmopolitan European cities (Trieste, Zurich, Paris). This eventually resulted in a cosmopolitan inner language. This paper therefore argues that Joyce’s migration experience is at the basis of his evolving literary translanguaging or, in other words, that the latter should be seen as the textual reflection of his constantly growing personal exposure to different languages in cosmopolitan environments. Each translinguistic instance should therefore be considered in light of the specific spatio-temporal situatedness it originated from. Using Joyce’s correspondence in addition to his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939) as examples, this article will explore how Joyce’s literary use of language(s) evolved hand-in-hand with a growing metalinguistic awareness and crosslinguistic agility, which characterized his everyday use of language as a multilingual speaker. Finally, this article will reflect both on the implications that Joyce’s use of language(s) has for the translation of his literary works, as well as on his contribution to the issue of migration and identity.