The Language of the Outlaw: A Clarification

Abstract

In his definitive biography of Joyce, Richard Ellmann quotes exten sively from a pamphlet entitled Language of the Outlaw (JJII 9In). Joyce relied on this text to craft one of the most famous sections of Ulysses, the recitation of John F. Taylor's speech in the Aeolus episode (U 7.791-870).l Professor MacHugh rehearses the speech?a lively discourse in favor of the Irish language?before the men in the Freeman's Journal office, and the analogy that organizes the argument, and indeed appears throughout Ulysses, would have been familiar in 1904: the Irish, like the Israelites enslaved in ancient Egypt, were a chosen people oppressed by a rich and powerful empire.2 My initial attempt to locate this source pamphlet was unsuccessful, and eventu ally the reason for this seemed clear. Ellmann, who quotes the pam phlet at length in both the biography and The Consciousness of Joyce, fails to note its author:3 the Irish nationalist and revolutionary Roger Casement.