"Our war is with words": James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , Dora Marsden, and Egoistic Language

ABSTRACT: While critics tend to assume that it was Ezra Pound who accepted James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for publication in The Egoist , the final decision was made by Dora Marsden, the periodical's founder and editor. This essay reads the serialization of Joyce's Künstlerroman alongside Marsden's own philosophic articles concerning individualism and language. It argues that, when read within the pages of The Egoist , Joyce's work appears to represent the novelization of Marsden's egoistic philosophy. Equally, Joyce's novel challenges the solipsistic basis of Marsden's philosophy and engenders a more empathetic turn within The Egoist .