james joyce writer biography

James Joyce

(1882-1941)

Who Was James Joyce?

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and short story writer. He published Portrait of the Artist in 1916 and caught the attention of Ezra Pound. With Ulysses , Joyce perfected his stream-of-consciousness style and became a literary celebrity. The explicit content of his prose brought about landmark legal decisions on obscenity. Joyce battled eye ailments for most of his life and he died in 1941.

Early Life and Education

Born James Augustine Aloysius Joyce on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, Joyce was one of the most revered writers of the 20th century, whose landmark book, Ulysses , is often hailed as one of the finest novels ever written. His exploration of language and new literary forms showed not only his genius as a writer but spawned a fresh approach for novelists, one that drew heavily on Joyce's love of the stream-of-consciousness technique and the examination of big events through small happenings in everyday lives.

Joyce came from a big family. He was the eldest of ten children born to John Stanislaus Joyce and his wife Marry Murray Joyce. His father, while a talented singer (he reportedly had one of the finest tenor voices in all of Ireland), didn't provide a stable household. He liked to drink and his lack of attention to the family finances meant the Joyces never had much money.

Because of his intelligence, Joyce's family pushed him to get an education. Largely educated by Jesuits, Joyce attended the Irish schools of Clongowes Wood College and later Belvedere College before finally landing at University College Dublin, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on modern languages.

Early Works: 'Dubliners' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'

Joyce's relationship with his native country was a complex one and after graduating he left Ireland for a new life in Paris where he hoped to study medicine. He returned, however, not long after upon learning that his mother had become sick. She died in 1903.

Joyce stayed in Ireland for a short time, long enough to meet Nora Barnacle, a hotel chambermaid who hailed from Galway and later became his wife. Around this time, Joyce also had his first short story published in the Irish Homestead magazine. The publication picked up two more Joyce works, but this start of a literary career was not enough to keep him in Ireland and in late 1904, he and Barnacle moved first to what is now the Croatian city of Pula before settling in the Italian seaport city of Trieste.

There, Joyce taught English and learned Italian, one of 17 languages he could speak, a list that included Arabic, Sanskrit and Greek. Other moves followed as Joyce and Barnacle (the two weren't formally married until some three decades after they met) made their home in cities like Rome and Paris. To keep his family above water (the couple went on to have two children, Georgio and Lucia), Joyce continued to find work as a teacher.

All the while, though, Joyce continued to write and in 1914, he published his first book , Dubliners , a collection of 15 short stories. Two years later, Joyce put out a second book, the novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .

While not a huge commercial success, the book caught the attention of the American poet, Ezra Pound, who praised Joyce for his unconventional style and voice.

'Ulysses' and Controversy

The same year that the Dubliners came out, Joyce embarked on what would prove to be his landmark novel: Ulysses . The story recounts a single day in Dublin. The date: June 16, 1904, the same day that Joyce and Barnacle met. On the surface, the novel follows the story three central characters: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, and his wife Molly Bloom, as well as the city life that unfolds around them. But Ulysses is also a modern retelling of Homer 's Odyssey , with the three main characters serving as modern versions of Telemachus, Ulysses and Penelope.

With its advanced use of interior monologue, the novel not only brought the reader deep into Bloom's sometimes lurid mind but pioneered Joyce's use of stream of consciousnesses as a literary technique and set the course for a whole new kind of novel. But Ulysses is not an easy read, and upon its publication in Paris in 1922 by Sylvia Beach, an American expat who owned a bookstore in the city, the book drew both praise and sharp criticism.

All of which only helped bolster the novel's sales. Not that it really needed the help. Long before Ulysses ever came out, debate raged over the content of the novel. Parts of the story had appeared in publications in the United States and the United Kingdom, the book was banned for several years after it was published in France. In the United States, Ulysses 's supposed obscenity prompted the Post Office to confiscate issues of the magazine that had published Joyce's work. Fines were levied against the editors, and a censorship battle was waged that only further hyped the novel.

Still, the book found its way into the hands of eager American and British readers, who managed to get hold of bootlegged copies of the novel. In the United States, the ban came to a head in 1932 when in New York City Customs Agents seized copies of the book that had been sent to Random House, which wanted to publish the book.

The case made its way to court where, in 1934, Judge John M. Woolsey came down in favor of the publishing company by declaring that Ulysses was not pornographic. American readers were free to read the book. In 1936, British fans of Joyce were allowed to do the same.

While he sometimes resented the attention Ulysses brought him, Joyce saw his days as a struggling writer come to an end with the book's publication. It hadn't been an easy road. During World War I, Joyce had moved his family to Zurich, where they subsisted on the generosity of English magazine editor, Harriet Weaver, and Barnacle's uncle.

Later Career and 'Finnegans Wake'

Eventually, Joyce and his family settled into a new life in Paris, which is where they were living when Ulysses was published. Success, however, couldn't protect Joyce from health issues. His most problematic condition concerned his eyes. He suffered from a constant stream of ocular illnesses, went through a host of surgeries, and for a number of years was near blind. At times, Joyce was forced to write in red crayon on sheets of large paper.

In 1939, Joyce published Finnegans Wake , his long-awaited follow-up novel, which, with its myriad of puns and new words, proved to be an even more difficult read than his previous work. Still, the book was an immediate success, earning "book of the week" honors in the United States and the United Kingdom not long after debuting.

A year after Finnegan s' publication, Joyce and his family were on the move again, this time to southern France in advance of the coming Nazi invasion of Paris. Eventually, the family ended back in Zurich.

Sadly, Joyce never saw the conclusion of World War II. Following an intestinal operation, the writer died at the age of 59 on January 13, 1941, at the Schwesternhause von Roten Kreuz Hospital. His wife and son were at his bedside when he passed. He is buried in Fluntern cemetery in Zurich.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: James
• Birth Year: 1882
• Birth date: February 2, 1882
• Birth City: Dublin
• Birth Country: Ireland
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: James Joyce was an Irish, modernist writer who wrote in a ground-breaking style that was known both for its complexity and explicit content.
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• University College Dublin
• Belvedere College
• Clongowes Wood College
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 1941
• Death date: January 13, 1941
• Death City: Zurich
• Death Country: Switzerland

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: James Joyce Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/writer/james-joyce
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 31, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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James Joyce (February 2, 1882 - January 13, 1941) was an Irish novelist who is widely considered to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. His novel Ulysses was controversial when published in 1922 and was banned in many locations, yet it has become one of the most discussed and studied books over the past century.

Born in Dublin, Joyce grew up in Ireland and is considered the quintessential Irish writer, yet he often rejected his homeland. He spent most of his adult life living on the European continent, obsessing over Ireland while creating in Ulysses a portrait of Irish life as experienced by Dublin's residents during one particular day, June 16, 1904.

Fast Facts: James Joyce

• Full Name: James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
• Known For: Innovative and highly influential Irish writer. Author of novels, short stories, and poetry
• Born: February 2, 1882 in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland
• Parents: John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray
• Died: January 13, 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland
• Education: University College Dublin
• Movement: Modernism
• Selected Works: Dubliners , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , Ulysses , Finnegans Wake .
• Spouse: Nora Barnacle Joyce
• Children: son Giorgio and daughter Lucia
• Notable Quote: "When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove." (Lecture Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages )

James Joyce was born February 2, 1882, in Rathgar, a Dublin suburb. His parents, John and Mary Jane Murray Joyce, were both musically talented, a trait which was passed along to their son. The family was large, with James the oldest of ten children who survived childhood.

The Joyces were part of an emerging Irish nationalist middle class of the late 1800s, Catholics who identified with the politics of Charles Stewart Parnell and expected the eventual home rule of Ireland. Joyce's father had a job as a tax collector, and the family was secure until the early 1890s, when his father lost his job, possibly because of a drinking problem. The family began to slide into financial insecurity.

As a child, Joyce was educated by Irish Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College in Kildare, Ireland, and later at Belvedere College in Dublin (through some family connections he was able to attend at reduced tuition). He eventually attended University College Dublin, focusing on philosophy and languages. Following his graduation in 1902 he traveled to Paris, intent on pursuing medical studies.

Joyce found he could not afford the fees for the schooling he sought, but he stayed in Paris and subsisted on money earned teaching English, writing articles, and with money occasionally sent to him by relatives back in Ireland. After a few months in Paris, he received an urgent telegram in May 1903 calling him back to Dublin as his mother was ill and dying.

Joyce had rejected Catholicism, but his mother asked him to go to confession and take Holy Communion. He refused. After she slipped into a coma, his mother's brother asked Joyce and his brother Stanislaus to kneel and pray at her bedside. They both refused. Joyce later used the facts surrounding his mother's death in his fiction. The character Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man refused his dying mother's wish and feels tremendous guilt for it.

Meeting Nora Barnacle

Joyce remained in Dublin following his mother's death and managed to make a modest living teaching and writing book reviews. The most important meeting of Joyce's life occurred when he saw a young woman with reddish-brown hair on the street in Dublin. She was Nora Barnacle, a native of Galway, in the west of Ireland, who was working in Dublin as a hotel maid. Joyce was struck by her and asked her for a date.

Joyce and Nora Barnacle agreed to meet in a few days and walk about the city. They fell in love, and would go on to live together and eventually marry.

Their first date occurred on June 16, 1904, the same day during which the action in Ulysses takes place. By selecting that particular date as the setting of his novel, Joyce was memorializing what he considered a momentous day in his life. As a practical matter, as that day stood out so clearly in his mind, he could remember specific details while writing Ulysses more than a decade later.

Early Publications

• Chamber Music (collection of poems, 1907)
• Giacomo Joyce (collection of poems, 1907)
• Dubliners (collection of short stories, 1914)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (novel, 1916)
• Exiles (play, 1918)

Joyce was determined to leave Ireland, and on October 8, 1904, he and Nora left together to live on the European continent. They would remain fiercely devoted to each other, and in some ways Nora was Joyce's great artistic muse. They would not legally marry until 1931. Living together outside of marriage would have been an enormous scandal in Ireland. In Trieste, Italy, where they eventually settled, no one seemed to care.

In the summer of 1904, while still living in Dublin, Joyce began publishing a series of short stories in a newspaper, the Irish Homestead. The stories would eventually grow into a collection titled Dubliners . On their first publication, readers wrote to the newspaper to complain about the puzzling stories, but today Dubliners is considered an influential collection of short fiction.

In Trieste, Joyce rewrote a piece of autobiographical fiction he had first attempted back in Dublin. But he also worked on a volume of poetry. His first published book was thus his poetry collection, Chamber Music , which was published in 1907.

It ultimately took Joyce ten years to get his short story collection into print. Joyce's realistic portrayal of city dwellers was considered immoral by a number of publishers and printers. Dubliners finally appeared in 1914.

Joyce's experimental fiction proceeded with his next work, an autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . The book follows the development of Stephen Dedalus, a character much like Joyce himself, a sensitive and artistically inclined young man determined to rebel against society's strictures. The book was published in 1916, and was reviewed widely by literary publications. Critics seemed impressed by the author's obvious skill, but were often offended or simply puzzled by his portrayal of life in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1918 Joyce wrote a play, Exiles . The plot concerns an Irish writer and his wife who have lived in Europe and return to Ireland. The husband, as he believes in spiritual freedom, encourages a romantic relationship between his wife and his best friend (which is never consummated). The play is considered a minor work of Joyce's, but some of the ideas in it appeared later in Ulysses .

Ulysses and Controversy

• Ulysses (novel, 1922)
• Pomes Penyeach (collection of poems, 1927)

As Joyce was struggling to publish his earlier work, he began an undertaking that would make his reputation as a literary giant. The novel Ulysses , which he began writing in 1914, is loosely based on the epic poem by Homer , The Odyssey . In the Greek classic, the protagonist Odysseus is a king and a great hero who is wandering homeward following the Trojan War. In Ulysses (the Latin name for Odysseus), a Dublin advertising salesman named Leopold Bloom, spends a typical day traveling about the city. Other characters in the book include Bloom's wife, Molly, and Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's fictitious alter ego who had been the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .

Ulysses is structured in 18 untitled chapters, each of which correspond to particular episodes of The Odyssey . Part of the innovation of Ulysses is that each chapter (or episode) is written in a different style (as the chapters were not only unmarked but unnamed, the change in presentation is what would alert the reader that a new chapter had begun).

It would be difficult to overstate the complexity of Ulysses , or the amount of detail and care that Joyce put into it. Ulysses has become known for Joyce's use of stream of consciousness and interior monologues. The novel is also remarkable for Joyce's use of music throughout and for his sense of humor, as wordplay and parody are employed throughout the text.

On Joyce's 40th birthday, February 2, 1922, Ulysses was published in Paris (some excerpts had been published earlier in literary journals). The book was immediately controversial, with some writers and critics, including novelist Ernest Hemingway , declaring it a masterpiece. But the book was also considered obscene and was banned in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. After a court battle, the book was finally ruled by an American judge to be a work of literary merit and not obscene, and it was legally published in America in 1934.

Ulysses remained controversial, even after it was ruled to be legal. Critics battled over its worth, and while it is considered to be a classic work, it has had detractors who found it baffling. In recent decades the book has become controversial because of battles over which particular edition constitute the genuine book. As Joyce made so many changes to his manuscript, and it is believed printers (some of whom could not understand English) made mistaken changes, various versions of the novel exist. A version published in the 1980s sought to correct many mistakes, but some Joyce scholars objected to the "corrected" edition, claiming it injected more mistakes and was itself a faulty edition.

Joyce and Nora, their son Giorgio, and daughter Lucia had moved to Paris while he was writing Ulysses . After the book's publication they remained in Paris. Joyce was respected by other writers and at times would socialize with people like Hemingway or Ezra Pound. But he mostly devoted himself to a new written work which consumed the rest of his life.

Finnegans Wake

• Collected Poems (collection of previously published poems and works, 1936)
• Finnegans Wake (novel, 1939)

Joyce's final book, Finnegans Wake , published in 1939, is puzzling, and it was no doubt intended to be. The book seems to be written in several languages at once, and the bizarre prose on the page seems to represent a dream-like state. It has often been noted that if Ulysses was the story of a day, Finnegans Wake is the story of a night.

The title of the book is based on an Irish-American vaudeville song in which an Irish worker, Tim Finnegan, dies in an accident. At his wake, liquor is spilled on his corpse and he rises from the dead. Joyce deliberately removed the apostrophe from the title, as he intended a pun. In Joyce's joke, the mythical Irish hero Finn MacCool is waking, therefore Finn again wakes . Such wordplay and complicated allusions are rampant through more than 600 pages of the book.

As might be expected, Finnegans Wake is Joyce's least-read book. Yet it has its defenders, and literary scholars have debated its merits for decades.

Literary Style and Themes

Joyce's writing style evolved over time, and each of his major works can be said to have its own distinct style. But, in general, his writings are marked with a remarkable attention to language, an innovative use of symbolism, and the use of interior monologue to portray the thoughts and feelings of a character.

Joyce's work is also defined by its complexity. Joyce exercised great care in his writing, and readers and critics have noticed layers and layers of meaning in his prose. In his fiction, Joyce made references to a wide variety of subjects, from classical literature to modern psychology. And his experiments with language involved the use of formal elegant prose, Dublin slang, and, especially in Finnegans Wake , the use of foreign terms, often as elaborate puns holding multiple meanings.

Death and Legacy

Joyce had been suffering from various health problems for many years by the time of the publication of Finnegans Wake . He had undergone many surgeries for eye problems, and was nearly blind.

When World War II broke out, the Joyce family fled from France to neutral Switzerland to escape the Nazis. Joyce died in Zurich, Switzerland, on January 13, 1941, after surgery for a stomach ulcer.

It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance of James Joyce on modern literature. Joyce's new methods of composition had a profound impact, and writers who followed him were often influenced and inspired by his work. Another great Irish writer, Samuel Beckett , considered Joyce an influence, as did the American novelist William Faulkner.

In 2014, the New York Times Book Review published an article headlined "Who Are James Joyce's Modern Heirs?" In the opening of the article, a writer notes, "Joyce’s work is so canonical that in some sense we are all inescapably his heirs." It is true that many critics have noted nearly all serious writers of fiction in the modern era have, directly or indirectly, been influenced by Joyce's work.

Stories from Dubliners have often been collected in anthologies, and Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , has often been used in high school and college classes.

Ulysses changed what a novel could be, and literary scholars continue to obsess over it. The book is also widely read and loved by ordinary readers, and every year on June 16th, "Bloomsday" celebrations (named for the main character, Leopold Bloom) are held in locations around the globe, including Dublin (of course), New York, and even Shanghai, China .

• "Joyce, James." Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature, vol. 2, Gale, 2009, pp. 859-863.
• "James Joyce." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Gale, 2004, pp. 365-367.
• Dempsey, Peter. "Joyce, James (1882—1941)." British Writers, Retrospective Supplement 3, edited by Jay Parini, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2010, pp. 165-180.
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Biography Online

James Joyce – Biography | Quotes

James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882, in Rathgar, Dublin. His parents were middle-class Catholics and his father was employed as a rent collector. Joyce grew up in a time when there were strong calls for Irish home rule and a new sense of national identity was being created. He appeared to be politically aware from a young age. Aged only nine years old he wrote a poem about the Irish republican leader Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was delighted his young son and praised Parnell because, like many Irishmen, his father was unhappy at Parnell’s treatment by the British and Catholic Church and the refusal to grant home rule.

Joyce aged 6

Despite being one of ten children, James Joyce was sent to a prestigious Jesuit boarding school called Clongowes Wood College. However, although receiving good income, his father was disorganised and dissolute – frittering away money on alcohol. Joyce was removed from that school and began to study at home with his mother. However, he later received a scholarship to the Jesuit, Belvedere College. Joyce did well academically and was twice elected to be president of the Marian Society. However, Joyce was a free thinker and spent his time reading books not approved of by the Jesuits; increasingly he became sceptical of the Catholic Church and the Irish establishment. He still retained an interest in religion and was strongly influenced by rationalist Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

In 1898, Joyce entered University College Dublin to study English, French and Italian. He also learnt Norwegian to be able to read Henrik Ibsen’s works in their original language. Despite mixing with the leading cultural and political figures of the day, Joyce felt Ireland suffered from too much social conformity and he hoped that moving to Europe would broaden his horizons. In 1902, he left for Paris with an intention to study medicine. However, in Paris, he struggled both with the study of medicine and financially. He soon dropped the idea of becoming a doctor, and when his mother fell fatally ill, he rushed back to Dublin to pay his last respects. But, much to his mother’s disappointment, he wouldn’t take the Catholic rites of confession and Holy communion – indicating outwardly he had left his Catholic faith. However, he later regretted not kneeling in prayer for his mother and denying her one of her last wishes.

Back in Ireland, he gained work teaching, singing and reviewing books. But, it was a precarious existence, with limited income stretched by his fondness for drinking copious amounts of alcohol. In 1904, he met Nora Barnacle a young chambermaid and they became romantically involved. Joyce then took Nora to Zurich, Trieste and finally Pola (then part of Austria-Hungary Empire modern-day Croatia), where he found work as a teacher. In Pola, his partner Nora gave birth to their first child, and they were joined by Joyce’s brother. They had a daughter Lucia in 1907. Joyce’s personal life was somewhat turbulent. His heavy drinking created friction with Nora and his brother.

In between teaching Joyce worked on writing short stories. These included a collection of stories related to his own experiences growing up in Dublin.

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” conversation with Frank Budgen, Zurich, 1918

On a couple of occasions, he returned to Dublin to try and get his collection of short stories “The Dubliners” published. But he struggled to convince his publisher to make it available. It was finally published in 1914 by the London publishing house of Grant Richards – nine years after he had completed it and after 17 rejections. The book considered themes of Irish nationalism and identity and was critical of the conservatism he felt Dublin represented at the time.

During the First World War, many of his students were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian empire, but Joyce was given an exit visa for Switzerland and he spent the war in Zurich. After the war, Joyce’s reputation as an innovative writer led to rich benefactors supporting him with grants to focus on writing. Joyce was very pleased and took the opportunity – moving to Paris and working very hard on finishing his first novel he started back in 1914.

“There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present. There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.”

When the book came out, it was praised for its depth of characterisation and insight into the human character. The book was also controversial when released, it was criticised for ‘obscene’ passages where characters mused on images of a sexual nature. It was temporarily banned in US and UK. (It was not published in US until 1934) Copies were destroyed by customs authorities. However, the partial ban only served to act as a means for improving awareness of the book. With good reviews from people like Ezra Pound, it gained good sales. Joyce’s innovative techniques, such as humour, parody and a stream of consciousness thought became a key element of modernist literature.

After Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write for a year. But, when he felt recovered he started work on a second novel, which he called “A work in Progress” – later published as “Finnegan’s Wake”. This took the stream of consciousness of Ulysees and pushed it to the limit, so much that the plot was obscure and language sometimes hard to decipher. When it came out, reviews were mixed with some reviewers feeling Joyce had tried too hard to be innovative and contrarian. Joyce was hard hit by the negative reviews and organised a supportive list of authors, such as Williams Carlos Williams who wrote positive comments.

Joyce suffered from poor health, through much of his life. In particular, his eyesight deteriorated and despite frequent eye surgery struggled to stem his loss of eyesight. He had over 30 eye operations in the 1920s and ended up wearing an eye patch. His daughter Lucia also suffered from schizophrenia and he was increasingly worried about her mental health. He took her to see Carl Jung, the famous psychologist. Jung remarked that he felt both Joyce and his daughter were schizophrenics, but Joyce was OK, because of his genius, he remarked they were

“like two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.”

Jung said he could not treat Lucia and she was committed to a mental asylum. In 1940, Joyce was in Paris, when the imminent Nazi invasion forced him to flee to the south of France. He then made his way to Zurich, Switzerland. He passed away on 13 January 1941, after falling sick from a tumour. He was 58 years old. His last words were reported as: “Does nobody understand?”

Political views

In the 1900s, Joyce became interested in democratic socialism. He supported the broad ideals of a more egalitarian society and a chance to change the rigid orthodoxies of the establishment. His political activism was short-lived as he became disillusioned with the infighting of the socialist parties and movements. But, he remained sympathetic to socialist ideals.

Irish identity

Despite not living in Ireland for much of his adult life, he felt a close kinship to the country of his birth. His novels and writings focus on the settings of Ireland and Dublin in particular. He said that through writing about his home city of Dublin, he could touch on universal themes.

“For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

Was Joyce an Irish nationalist?

Joyce did express support for Home Rule and the aspirations of Parnell. He was not an unwavering supporter because he felt Ireland was ruled by the Catholic Church. He once said

“I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.”

Also, Joyce was critical at what he saw as the narrow-mindedness and zealotry of some nationalists.

His biographer Richard Ellmann suggests he had an initial enthusiasm for the 1916 Easter rising, but it soon wore off and he rejected an opportunity to write an article on the uprising. When asked whether he looked forward to the Irish Republic, he rather ironically replied “Why? So that I might declare myself its first enemy?'” ( 1 ) – The censorship of his Dublin based stories rankled with Joyce throughout his life. In Ulysees, he touches on violent upheaval and Joyce’s distaste for war and conflict are evident.

“—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life. —What? says Alf. —Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.” (Ulysees)

Joyce both loved Dublin and Ireland but felt a need to escape and write about Dublin from a geographical distance. Explaining his decision to live away from Ireland, he explains how the country held back a man’s development.

“The economic and intellectual conditions of his homeland do not permit the individual to develop. The spirit of the country has been weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties. Individual initiative has been paralyzed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while the body has been shackled by peelers, duty officers and soldiers. No self-respecting person wants to stay in Ireland.” “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages,” lecture, (27 April 1907

He never set foot in Ireland after 1912. Spending time in Paris, he became acquainted with many of the leading European intellectuals such as Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway , Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot. He loved their company, but intriguingly if he met an Irish ex-pat, he would invite them to talk about the streets of Dublin to reminisce about his old town.

Religious views

The religious views of Joyce have gained considerable interest. The role of the Catholic Church in Ireland was very powerful during Joyce’s childhood and lifetime. He rejected formal membership of the church arguing that it went against his instinctive ideals. He wrote to his partner Nora Barnacle

” My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life and religious doctrines. … Six years ago I left the Catholic church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a beggar but I retained my pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do.” – Letter 1904. Selected Letters of James Joyce.

Yet, despite this, Joyce attended Church services later in his life – even though he stated it was more for aesthetic reasons than religious ones. Joyce held a mixture of mutually inconsistent views and reviewers see Catholic themes embedded in his writings. In “A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man” Joyce explains his own intellectual development and explains an ‘epiphany’ where he realised you could experience life through art and not just religion. He also retained a great faith in the human soul and a spiritual view of the world.

“All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.” Letter to Augusta Gregory (22 November 1902),

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of James Joyce ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , Published 4 April 2020.

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James Joyce

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland. He attended Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College, and he received a BA from the Royal University in Dublin.

In 1904 Joyce left Dublin with Nora Barnacle; the couple had two children and eventually married in 1931. From 1904 to 1905, they lived in Pola, Austria-Hungary, where Joyce published his first literary work, the satirical poem “The Holy Office.” They went on to live in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, returning to Ireland only rarely.

Joyce published his first book of poetry, Chamber Music (Elkin Matthews), in 1907. He is also the author of the poetry collection Pomes Penyeach (Shakespeare and Company, 1927). In 1936 The Black Sun Press published Joyce’s Collected Poems , which included the poems from his previous two collections alongside the poem “Ecce Puer,” written in 1932.

A review , sometimes attributed to T. S. Eliot , of Chamber Music in The Egoist reads, “Mr. Joyce is probably something of a musician; it is lyric verse, and good lyric verse is very rare. It will be called ‘fragile,’ but it is substantial, with a great deal of thought behind fine workmanship.”

Joyce is best known for his works of fiction, including Ulysses (Shakespeare and Company, 1922), the focus of several incendiary literary controversies; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (B. W. Huebsch, 1916); and Dubliners (Grant Richards, 1914). He also published Exiles: A Play in Three Acts (Grant Richards, 1918). Together, his works represent a major contribution to avant-garde modernism and to twentieth-century English literature.

Joyce suffered from a series of ocular illnesses, and he spent periods of his later life partially or totally blind. He died of complications from an intestinal surgery on January 13, 1941, in Zurich, Switzerland.

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James Joyce

• Literature Notes
• James Joyce Biography
• About Dubliners
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• The Sisters
• An Encounter
• After the Race
• Two Gallants
• The Boarding House
• A Little Cloud
• Counterparts
• A Painful Case
• Ivy Day in the Committee Room
• Character Analysis
• Unnamed Boy (The Sisters," "An Encounter," "Araby")"
• Gabriel Conroy (The Dead")"
• Critical Essays
• Themes in Dubliners
• James Joyce and Popular Culture
• Full Glossary for Dubliners
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Early Years and Education

James Augustine Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland. At the age of six and a half, he was enrolled at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit School for Boys in Ireland's County Kildare. Eventually his family withdrew him from Clongowes, lacking the tuition. From 1893 to 1898 Joyce studied at Belvedere College, another private boys' school, and in 1898 he enrolled at University College, Dublin. He graduated in 1902 with a degree in modern languages. During 1903 he studied medicine in Paris and published reviews; receiving a telegram saying that his mother was deathly ill, he returned to Dublin in time for her death. The following year he met Nora Barnacle, a country girl from the west of Ireland who would become his lifelong companion; their first date took place on June 16, 1904: the day on which Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, would be set.

Literary Writing

Also in 1904, while teaching school in Ireland, Joyce published stories in The Irish Homestead and began a novel, Stephen Hero, that would eventually metamorphose into A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. Though unmarried to Nora Barnacle, he left Ireland with her and they traveled together to Europe, where he taught languages in the Berlitz School in Yugoslavia and then in Trieste, Italy, where their son Giorgio was born. In 1906 Joyce, Nora, and Giorgio moved to Rome, where he worked in a bank, and the following year his collected poems, called Chamber Music, were published in London. Also during this time, his daughter Lucia was born.

In 1909 Joyce visited Ireland, where he opened a movie theater in Dublin with the help of some European investors; he also signed a contract for the publication of Dubliners. In 1912 he visited Ireland again, this time with his family; the book would not be published until two years later, in London. Also in 1914, Joyce's first completed novel, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, was serialized in the London magazine The Egoist. He began writing Ulysses at this time.

The Joyces moved in 1915 to Switzerland. The following year, A Portrait was published in New York. In 1918, his poorly received play, Exiles, was published in London. It was also that year that chapters from Ulysses, his novel-in-progress, began to appear in the American journal The Little Review. Publication of the completed book would not occur until 1922. Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill were two of the first to buy the already famous new book.

The writer's Pomes Pennyeach was published in 1927; four years later, Joyce and Nora were married in London, already having lived together for over a quarter of a century. In 1933, a New York judge ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic; until that time, it had been banned in the United States as obscene. A year later, Random House published the novel, and five years after that, in 1939, Finnegans Wake appeared.

Joyce died at the age of 59 on January 13, 1941, in Zurich, where he was buried.

Honors and Awards

Though easily one of the most innovative and influential writers of the twentieth century, James Joyce was little rewarded during his lifetime for his achievements in literature. Upon the appearance of his first published stories, he received the kudos of his literary peers, giants like W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. With the publication of Ulysses in Paris — and its subsequent banning in the United States and other countries — he achieved worldwide fame and notoriety, appearing, for instance, on the cover of Time magazine. Formal recognition, in the form of honors and awards, was scant, however. Amazingly, he never received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Money was rarely forthcoming.

Unlike most other authors, whose status ebbs and flows, Joyce has never gone out of fashion. (In that way he is like his heroes, Shakespeare and Ibsen.) Stylistically, his influence can be seen in the work of literary giants who followed him, ranging from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison and Henry Roth. To many writers, scholars, and general readers, he is the very embodiment of the Modern in literature.

James Joyce continues to influence all writers at every level who strive to write about the ordinary, to tell the story of the little guy (or gal). In 1999 a panel convened by the Modern Library named Ulysses the most notable novel of the century, with A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man coming in third.

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James joyce: a biography.

James Augustine Joyce, the eldest surviving son of John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane ('May') Joyce, was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882. He attended Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boys' school in County Kildare, until his father lost his job as a Rates Collector in 1891. Around the same time, Joyce took 'Aloysius' as his confirmation name. After a brief spell at the Christian Brothers School, all of the Joyce brothers entered Belvedere College, a Jesuit boys' day school; fortunately, the school fees were waived.

In 1894, with the Joyces' finances dwindling further, the family moved house for the fourth time since Joyce's birth. They also sold off their last remaining Cork property. Despite increasing poverty and upheaval, Joyce managed to win a prize for his excellent exam results and wrote an essay on Ulysses which, arguably, sowed the seeds for Joyce's 1922 masterpiece of the same name. In 1896 Joyce was made prefect of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a devotional society. However, he was not as pure as he seemed; Joyce claimed to have begun his ‘sexual life’ later that year, at the age of fourteen.[1]

In 1898, Joyce began studying modern languages at the Royal University (now University College, Dublin). During his time at university Joyce published several papers on literature, history, and politics. He also enjoyed visits to the music hall.[2] Joyce became particularly interested in the work of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Irish writer W. B. Yeats. In 1902, on a visit to London, Joyce met Yeats who introduced him to the British poet and critic Arthur Symons. In the same year, Joyce registered to study medicine at the Royal University but decided to leave Dublin and start medical school in Paris instead. Joyce's Parisian days were largely spent reading philosophy or literature, rather than learning about medicine. Whilst back in Dublin for Christmas, Joyce met Oliver St John Gogarty, a fellow medical student and poet who was to be reimagined as Buck Mulligan in Ulysses (1922). Joyce returned to Paris in January but soon gave up his course. In 1903, Joyce came back to Dublin to be with his ailing mother who died on 13 August.

Early Works and Family

1904 was a significant year for Joyce. He began work on his short story collection Dubliners (1914) and Stephen Hero (a semi-biographical novel), wrote his first poetry collection Chamber Music (1907) , and wrote an essay entitled 'A Portrait of the Artist' which would later be transformed into a novel entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Shortly after leaving the family home, Joyce met Nora Barnacle, a charming chambermaid hailing from Galway. Joyce and Nora first went out together on 16 June 1904, the date on which Ulysses is set. Four months later, the couple left Dublin for continental Europe. They arrived in Zurich but soon moved to Pola as Joyce secured a job teaching English with the Berlitz School.

In 1905, Joyce transferred to the Berlitz School in Trieste. Except for six months in Rome, attempting to become a banker, Joyce stayed in Trieste for the next eleven years. On 27 July 1905, Joyce's son, Giorgio, was born. He was followed by Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who was born on 26 July 1907. Around the time of Lucia's birth, Joyce was hospitalised with rheumatic fever and began to experience the eye troubles which would plague him throughout his life. Despite his below-par health and lack of money, Joyce managed to avail himself of Trieste's cultural delights; drinking, dining, more drinking, theatre, popular opera, dances, concerts, and films. He also took singing lessons; Joyce's teacher, Francesco Ricardo Sinico, 'praised his voice but told him he would need two years to train it properly'.[3] Unfortunately, Joyce did not have the funds to continue with his lessons for the suggested length of time. Nonetheless, Joyce's singing teacher clearly made an impression on him as he used his name for Captain and Emily Sinico in his Dubliners story 'A Painful Case'.

In 1909, Joyce befriended Ettore Schmitz (Italian author 'Italo Svevo') who praised Joyce's unfinished manuscripts for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and persuaded him to finish the novel. Whilst back in Dublin for talks with publishers, Joyce bumped into an old acquaintance, Vincent Cosgrave, who claimed that Nora had enjoyed relations with him whilst committed to Joyce. Joyce's conflicted emotions regarding this claim can be traced in his letters to Nora.[4] Joyce eventually reconciled his differences with Nora and returned to Trieste in October 1909. In December of the same year, Joyce went back to Dublin to open one of the city's first permanent cinemas – The Volta . This was a short-lived business venture; the cinema closed down in April 1910.[5]

Struggle and Success

From 1910 to 1913, Joyce was mainly engaged in revising A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and battling to get Dubliners published. To earn money, Joyce lectured at the Università; his series of Hamlet lectures could well have been an inspiration for Stephen's Hamlet theory in the 'Scylla and Charybdis' episode of Ulysses . In 1914, thanks to the enthusiasm of fellow Modernist Ezra Pound, Dubliners was serialised in the Egoist , a literary journal. Later that year, Dubliners was finally published as a novel by Grant Richards. Whilst other young men were going off to fight in the First World War, Joyce began a prolific writing period; in the final months of 1914, Joyce wrote Giacomo Joyce (a semi-autobiographical multilingual novelette which Joyce never attempted to publish), drafted Exiles (Joyce's only play), and began writing Ulysses (Joyce's famous modern epic).[6]

In 1915, Joyce, Nora, Giorgio, and Lucia, left Trieste for neutral Zurich. Stanislaus, Joyce's brother who had also been living in Trieste, failed to escape; he was placed in an Austrian detention centre until the end of the war. For the next few years, aided by grants from the Royal Literary Fund and the British Civil List (secured by Yeats and Pound), Joyce continued to write steadily. Joyce finished Exiles in May 1915 and, despite undergoing his first eye operation in August 1917, Ulysses continued to progress.

Controversy and Final Works

In 1918, Exiles was published by Grant Richards, and in 1919 it was performed in Munich. From March 1918 to September 1920, Ulysses (still unfinished) was serialised in the Little Review , another literary magazine. However, not many subscribers were able to read certain episodes ('Laestrygonians', 'Scylla and Charybdis', 'Cyclops', and 'Nausicaa') as the magazines were confiscated and burned by the US Postal Authorities. The Egoist successfully published and distributed edited (less obscene) versions of several Ulysses episodes. In 1921, the Little Review was convicted of publishing obscenities and ceased publication. Joyce, now living in Paris (the whole family moved in October 1920), befriended Sylvia Beach who offered to publish Ulysses – in its entirety – under the imprint of her Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Joyce agreed to Beach's offer; after many revisions before and during the proof stages, the first copies of Ulysses were published on Joyce's fortieth birthday – 2/2/1922.[7]

In 1923, Joyce began writing Work in Progress which would later become his experimental masterpiece, Finnegans Wake (1939). The following year, the first fragments of Work in Progress were published in Transatlantic Review , with further instalments being published in transition in 1927. 1927 also saw the publication of Joyce's second poetry collection, Pomes Penyeach , published by Shakespeare and Company. In 1928 Anna Livia Plurabelle (an early, shorter version of Finnegans Wake ) was published in New York. Joyce was also recorded reading Anna Livia Plurabelle aloud; he played this recording to the Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein when they met the following year.[8]

1929 and 1931 saw French translations of Ulysses and Anna Livia Plurabelle respectively. In 1930, despite undergoing a series of further eye operations, Joyce finished and published Haveth Childers Everywhere , a sequel to Anna Livia Plurabelle and another step towards Finnegans Wake . On 4 July 1931, Joyce and Nora were officially married, in London. In December of the same year, Joyce's father passed away. In 1932 (15 February), Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce, was born to Giorgio and his wife Helen. Meanwhile, Lucia's mental health deteriorated; she was seen by a clinic in 1932, hospitalised in 1933, and treated by analytical psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1934.

In 1933, Ulysses faced an obscenity trial in America. After deliberation, Judge John M. Woolsey declared that the book was not obscene so could be legally published in the USA. This decision prompted the publication of several versions of Ulysses over the next couple of years, including the Random House edition (1934), the Limited Editions Club edition with illustrations by Henri Matisse (1935), and the Bodley Head edition (1936). In 1938, Joyce finished Finnegans Wake ; the following year it was published simultaneously in London and New York. In September 1939, World War Two broke out and the Joyce family moved back to neutral Zurich. On 13 January 1941 Joyce died, following surgery on a perforated ulcer. He was buried in Fluntern cemetery, Zurich, foregoing Catholic last rites. Nora died ten years later and was buried separately in Fluntern. Both bodies were reburied together in 1966.

To see the work of Ezra Pound, contemporary champion of Joyce's fiction, visit the Pound section of the website.

• [1] Richard Ellmann, James Joyce , (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 48.
• [2] Jeri Johnson, ‘A Chronology of James Joyce’, in James Joyce, Ulysses , (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. lxiii-lxix (p. lxiv).
• [3] John McCourt, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904-1920, (Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 2001), pp. 74-5.
• [4] Richard Ellmann (ed.), Selected Letters of James Joyce (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), pp. 156-196.
• [5] For more information on Joyce's cinema, see John McCourt (ed.), Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema (Cork: Cork University Press, 2010) – especially chapters one and two. Also see my 3-minute lecture on Joyce and cinema .
• [6] For an in-depth look at this prolific writing period, see John McCourt, The Years of Bloom , pp. 191-253.
• [7] For a detailed account of the composition of Ulysses , see Luca Crispi, 'Manuscript Timeline 1905-1922', Genetic Joyce Studies , 4 (2004), freely available online at: http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/GJS4/GJS4%20Crispi.htm .
• [8] For more information of Joyce’s meeting with Eisenstein, see Gösta Werner, ‘James Joyce and Sergei Eisenstein’, James Joyce Quarterly , 27:3 (1990), 491-507.

If reusing this resource please attribute as follows: James Joyce: A Biography at http://writersinspire.org/content/james-joyce-biography by Cleo Hanaway, licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (2.0 UK).

James Joyce: A Biography

James joyce (1882-1941).

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, best known for his novel, Ulysses , and his later novel, Finnegans Wake . He is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

Ulysses is a seminal work in which Homer’ s Odyssey is paralleled in a range of episodes and literary styles. Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners , is regarded as one of the best collection of stories of the century. His first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) marks a new era in British fiction, and Finnegans Wake is legendary for its complexity and depth. Samuel Becket said about it: ‘His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.’

Joyce’s influence on other writers, particularly Americans, is incalculable. We see several examples of recent American novels that allude to Ulysses while employing traditional narrative storytelling techniques and well-defined characters. These novels are both popular and critically substantive. A huge number of them invoke, the shape and central characters of Joyce’s masterpiece.

It is more than just writers, it is culture generally that Joyce’s influence can be felt. In Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion there is an episode in its “Lives of the Cowboys” spoof where Martin Sheen plays James Joyce in a gunfight with Clint Eastwood. One can hear the New Orleans-style jazz band, Ulysses, on Saturday nights at the James Joyce pub in Santa Barbara, California. There are tributes to James Joyce with references to his works in music clubs across America.

Photograph of James Joyce

Ulysses and Finnegans Wake changed the literary landscape. The nineteenth century novel was dominated by the English Romantics and the French and Russian realists, but with the emergence of modernism in the twentieth century writers began to pay more attention to language. Modernism led to a change in emphasis from focus on character and plot to the elements of the language itself. That is the particular thing that changed the landscape of fiction and created some of the famous names of twentieth century fiction: such writers as different as Samuel Becket, Jorge Luis Borges , Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, Flann O’Brien, William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson.

In 1999 Time magazine named Joyce one of the hundred most important people of the twentieth century. In 1998, the US publisher of Joyce’s works ranked Ulysses number 1, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man number 3, and Finnegans Wake number 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

The work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually as Bloomsday on 16 June, in Dublin and in several other cities worldwide. In April 2013 the Central Bank of Ireland issued a silver €10 commemorative coin in honour of Joyce.

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‘James Joyce’: How the writer’s life led to the words that survive him

Gordon Bowker's "James Joyce: A New Biography" doesn't break new ground, but its knowledgeable and engaging perspective will please fans of the Irish writer and anyone fascinated by writers' lives.

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‘James Joyce:

A New Biography’

by Gordon Bowker

Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

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608 pp., $35

Like his sentences, meandering and twirling and refusing to settle into something soothingly predictable, James Joyce was a wanderer. The man who changed the art of the novel forever with “Ulysses” (and who wrote one of the loveliest novellas ever to see print, “The Dead”) spent his life moving from place to place, drifting with his family through an endless stream of rooms and flats across Italy, France and Switzerland — far from his native land of Ireland, which nonetheless informed every word he wrote.

A new biography of Joyce seems an unlikely and perhaps unnecessary endeavor: The meticulous, splendid “James Joyce” by Richard Ellmann (first published in 1959; revised edition 1982) remains definitive. The writer’s life seems thoroughly mined; even his wife, daughter and father have recently earned their own biographies. So while Gordon Bowker’s new “James Joyce” contains little that’s startlingly new, it’s nonetheless a pleasure, for Joyce fans as well as those fascinated by writers’ lives.

That life, to be sure, had few monumental events. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, born to a struggling Dublin family in 1882, seems to have spent most of his waking hours asking various benefactors for money, changing addresses, singing (he had a fine Irish tenor), drinking — and writing. His literary output was relatively small: a book of short stories (“Dubliners”), three novels (“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “Ulysses,” “Finnegans Wake”), a play (“Exiles), a few poems. Each built on what had gone before, leapfrogging into another level of language-turned-music, of allusion, of wordplay. You can read in the early work “The Dead” the beginnings of those unexpected yet somehow perfect rhythms, particularly in its final sentence: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

“Ulysses,” his masterpiece, commemorated one pivotal day: On June 10, 1904, young Jim Joyce met an insouciant redhead strolling along a Dublin sidewalk; their first date was six days later. She was Nora Barnacle, and “a master had just stumbled into his Irish muse,” writes Bowker. Though an unlikely duo (she had little interest in books), they were inseparable for the rest of their lives; raising two children while sauntering through Europe, and finally marrying long after the fact, in 1931. “Ulysses,” a complex and layered work that’s a joy to untangle, takes place in Dublin on June 16, 1904; it’s a richly populated tribute both to a woman and a city, filled with music and vivid sensual detail. Frequently banned, it brought Joyce notoriety, a measure of fame, and never quite enough money.

Later came the famously obscure “Finnegans Wake” (“Perhaps under morphia his meaning would stream to the surface,” Virginia Woolf wrote to a friend), the heartbreak of daughter Lucia’s mental illness, and finally his early death, of complications from ulcer surgery, aged not quite 59. “The great Joycean caravan,” writes Bowker, “had finally come to a halt.”

The author of biographies of Malcolm Lowry and George Orwell, Bowker writes knowledgeably and engagingly about his subject, clearly fascinated by how the life led to the words that survive it. Early on, he compares biography to confronting the wreckage of a deserted house. “Amid the chaos,” he writes, “we may catch a fleeting impression of what the place once was like when occupied, a presumption of lives lived, of memories stored and passions spent.” Here, he’s found a life — and a mind — well worth a second glance.

Moira Macdonald is

the Seattle Times movie critic.

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James Joyce: A Biography by Gordon Bowker - review

N o book on James Joyce goes half as far as this one in establishing connections between passages in the classic texts and incidents in the artist's life. Even Joyce's uneasy struggle to exclude unflattering details from the first biography of him, by Herbert Gorman, is used to explain a passing reference in Finnegans Wake to a "biografiend". What Joyce wanted was someone who would allow him control over every element of his reputation: a biografriend. Gorman, although he accepted the main interdictions – on family privacies – was not happy with the arrangement or the outcome. He insulted Joyce by failing to send him a copy of the published volume. Gordon Bowker demonstrates just how comprehensively the artist also sought to control the first extended works of literary analysis on Ulysses . Joyce was a gifted autocritic, and even today Frank Budgen 's 1934 memoir about the making of Ulysses sparkles, because it is filled with the Dubliner's table-talk. Stuart Gilbert, author of James Joyce's Ulysses (1930), was somewhat more resistant to manipulation, keeping his reservations out of his study of Homeric analogies in the masterpiece, but filling a sardonic diary with sarcasms about the Joyce circle. Bowker, whose respect for the greatness of Joyce's texts never wanes, is shrewd enough to include a liberal amount of these balancing judgments. The strictest injunction laid on Gorman was also the last: that Joyce's motivation in leaving Ireland never be disclosed. All subsequent biographies have accepted that Joyce made himself modern by abandoning Ireland as a cultural backwater disfigured by clerical oppression and a general censoriousness. The truth is more mundane but sadly prophetic of the fate of thousands of Irish graduates in the decades after Joyce: he simply could not find a post in the country commensurate with his qualifications, abilities and ambitions. So the flight with Nora Barnacle had to be rebranded as a dissident exercise in "silence, exile and cunning". Only once did Joyce deviate from this line. He told the painter Arthur Power that in the Dublin of his youth the British retained all power, with the consequence that ordinary people felt no responsibility for anything and were free to do or say what they wanted. Only with independence in 1922 emerged a nation of apple-lickers: people who, if tempted in the Garden of Eden, would have licked rather than bitten the apple. Like all honest biographers before him, Bowker knows that turn-of-the-century Dublin was filled with intrepid artists and unfettered intellectuals. Yet somehow he feels compelled to support the common contention that the great man made himself thoroughly modern by ceasing to be knowingly Irish. Not so. To be Irish, in those days, was to be modern anyway, whether one wanted to be or not. Good educational opportunities along with chronic undercapitalisation produced the formula for a major experimental culture. Perhaps because he doesn't rate modernist Dublin too highly, Bowker sometimes slips up on details – he sets the Cyclops episode of Ulysses in Davy Byrne's rather than Barney Kiernan's pub; he seems unaware that the burning of Cork city was due mainly to the Black and Tans; and his etymologies of Gaelic names can be dubious. On the credit side, he has been careful not to accept as fact details which were fictionalised by Joyce. He records, accurately, that Oliver Gogarty (the false friend who lived with Joyce for a time in the Martello Tower in Sandycove) was the son of a surgeon, whereas Richard Ellmann (taking Ulysses at its word) depicted him as a "counterjumper's son" – that is, the child of a sales assistant. Ellmann was a brilliant biographer and skilful interviewer, early enough on the scene to talk with many of Joyce's acquaintances, some of whom told him untruths. Bowker, without fuss, fixes mistaken details. He also gives a more nuanced account of just how deeply Joyce's years in Trieste influenced the shaping of Ulysses . Because it was a port city like Dublin on the edge of an already shaky empire and because it contained geniuses such as Italo Svevo, it filled Joyce's head with ideas and characters. This study will be valuable to students as a summation of our current biographical knowledge of Joyce. It captures recurring features of his art: a vaudevillian's love of seaside settings, a delight in using children's lore and nursery rhymes as portals of discovery, a compulsion to map his own family romance on to world history. It shows how difficult he could be even to his greatest admirers; yet it also evokes the heroism of a man who, confronted by poverty, ill health and endless uprootings, somehow found in himself the courage to write epics in celebration of ordinary people and the intricacies of their minds. It is in its way an example as well as an account of dignified audacity. This doesn't mean that Ellmann's 1959 biography is passé. Not only did he write a beautiful prose, which no subsequent scholar has equalled, but he also had a fellow-artist's understanding of the strange blend of facts, experiences, ideas and accidents which went into the creation of "The Dead" and Ulysses . Ellmann was one of the great literary critics of the last century and his biography, though long, implies a great deal more than it says. His account is of a flawed but decent man, who redeemed occasional misbehaviour by the scale of his devotion to his family and to his work. Because its portrait contains much of the painter as well as the sitter, it will live for ever as itself a work of art. Joyce was restless, not only about biographies of him but sitting for portraits. When the painter Patrick Tuohy began to talk about the importance of capturing the Joycean soul, he muttered darkly: "Never mind my soul, Tuohy. Just make sure you get my tie right." He would, for that reason, probably approve of Bowker's book, which generally rests content with external detail but leaves the deeper acts of interpretation to others. Declan Kiberd's Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living is published by Faber.

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James Joyce

James Joyce, an Irish novelist, was one of the most impressive and the most potent figures of the 20th century. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and is deemed the quintessential Irish writer. He spent a part of his life out of Dublin wandering and roaming in European continents. During that while, he focused on creating the portrait of Ulysses ; a note on Irish life as experienced by a Dubliner. This novel met a heavy controversy when published in 1922. Its publication was banned in many locations yet it was the most widely read book of the previous century.  

Joyce belonged to a middle-class Catholic family. He received early education from Jesuits school. His training as a schoolboy under Jesuits gives an account of material for the initial chapters of his autobiography The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  During school days he received scholarships one after one and helped restore the deteriorating financial situation of his family.  In the meantime, he openly opposed the social and religious orders of his time. He eventually left Catholicism and embraced aesthetic philosophy. 

Joyce studied modern languages and proved to be a brilliant polyglot linguist. Ibsen’s work greatly influenced Joyce’s writing. He admired his unmatched intellect and choice of exile from his own land. Just like Ibsen, his writing was also attacked as ‘subversive’. When he was in Paris, he met exile by Irish nationalists and literary circles. He met with Nora Barnacle and developed his relationship with her as a lifelong companion. 

After voluntary exile from Ireland, he settled in Croatia and then resided in Trieste. For Joyce, who effectively left Ireland for good in 1904, returning only for three brief visits, the supreme artist lives on in local time abroad, and “beats” time only the way a musician might at the podium.

Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime!

But, Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?

(Finnegans Wake)

In 1914, his work Dubliners was published which couldn’t receive commercial success but attracted intellects and critics including Ezra Pound. Lately, he became his friend and helped him in publicizing works. He also supported him financially. He completed his famous novel Ulysses in Zurich which took seven years to complete. He moved to Paris and after the outbreak of war, returned to Zurich.

A Short Biography of James Joyce

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland. He was enrolled in the Jesuit school of Clongowes Wood College at the age of six. His family was struggling financially so they eventually dropped him out of school, due to a lack of school fees. He then sent to study at Belvedere College, another private boys’ school where he studied from 1893-98. In 1898 he started school at University College, Dublin. He received his graduate degree in modern languages ​​in 1902.

In 1903 he went to Paris where he studied medicine and published a review. That’s where he got the news of his mother’s illness who was on the deathbed and he returned to Dublin. That same year he met an Irish woman named Nora Barnacle. She developed a close bond with him and later became his lifelong friend. Their first date was set on the same date at which his masterpiece, Ulysses was to be published. 

Literary Writing

Joyce’s literary career started in 1904 while serving as a teacher in a school in Ireland. His first published story was The Irish Homestead . In the same year, he started his first novel Stephen Hero that ultimately metamorphoses into A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.  He traveled together with Nora Barnacle to Europe where he provided services in schools of Berlitz, Yugoslavia, Trieste and Italy. There, Giorgio, their son was born. In 1906, Joyce with Nora and Giorgio moved to Rome. He worked in a bank there and the next year his collection of poems, Chamber Music, was published in London. Her daughter Lucia was also born during this time.  

During his short visit to Ireland in 1909, he opened a movie theatre in Dublin with the support of foreign investors and also signed a contract for the publication of his novel Dubliners . In 1912 he again had a chance to visit Ireland with his family. In 1914 his novel A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man was serialized by a magazine, The Egoist.

He began writing Ulysses . He moved to Switzerland in 1915 and at the same time his book The Portrait was published in NewYork. An American journal Little Review started writing his upcoming book Ulysses that received heavy attention from people and popularity. Hemingway and Churchill were one of the early buyers of this book. 

In 1927 his poetic collection Pomes Penyeach was published. After four years of publication, Joyce and Nora got married in London. In 1933 Joyce was levied with the charge that his book Ulysses contains pornographic material so it was banned in the U.S. After a year, Random House Publication issued the banned novel again and after five years in 1939, Finnegans Wake appeared.  

By the time of the publication of his novel, Finnegans Wake, Joyce suffered many health problems and he had to undergo many eye surgeries that he nearly got blind. During WWII, he fled to Switzerland to avoid the Nazis. He died there in 1941 after having stomach surgery. 

Honors and Awards

As a controversial but influential writer, Joyce was less rewarded during his lifetime for his services in Literature. With the publication of his first collection of poetry, he received the attention of leading figures of that era including Yeats and Pound. Upon the appearance of Ulysses, he gained worldwide recognition and notoriety when his novel was banned in the United States and other countries.  As far as the formal awards are concerned, he did not receive any. 

In Spite of ebbs and flaws, Joyce’s work influenced many other literary giants ranging from Hemingway, Faulkner to Ellison and Roth. He had never gone out of fashion for his diversity and unique stylistic features and that is why he is considered the very embodiment in Modern Literature. 

He continued inspiring even after his death to those renowned writers who want to write about ordinary things. In 1999 a panel of  Modern Library categorized Ulysses as the most distinguished novel of the century and placed A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man at third in the list.

The Writing Style of James Joyce

Joyce’s distinct writing style varies in each work due to remarkable use of diction, innovative symbolism, interior soliloquies and monologues and epiphanies. His work is also marked by the amount of complexity exercised in writing. Critics and readers have noticed a multilayered but careful meaning fabrication in his prose works. He has also touched modern psychology in his fiction works. 

As far the language is concerned, he followed traditional and formal diction of Dublin. He often employs Irish slang especially in Finnegans Wake, he noticeably use foriegn words to create puns and allegory. 

He has also been involved in literary waves of his time; realism and symbolism (which are further followed by sub waves like futurism, impressionism and surrealism). But he negated his involvement in any such movement. Instead he experimented with a combination of these currents as both the approaches can be found simultaneously in his works. This way he created a new dream language; a mixture of  existing and non existing or inventive words to give a dense and allegorical effect among his immense stock of words. The most salient features of his writing style include the following trends. 

Stream of Consciousness

Joyce’s writing style is enhanced through a variety of literary devices and terms both classic and modern. To trigger interior monologues and soliloquies, he uses stream of consciousness technique. For this he avoids punctuations, puns and onomatopoeic elements in texts. Joyce adapted this style from 18th Century novelist, Sterne. By using these elements he jumps into the mind of his character and lets the reader experience the way the character is feeling.  

Epiphany is one of the inspiring concepts of Joyce’s writing style. In his epiphany narratives, we can find a discontinuous construction of the outside world. His character Stephan Dedalus tells us to distinguish between the constructed and real world. His normality in treating the subject refers to the mystical essence of things. 

This essence is what epiphany reveals. As Fournier  remarks  that  “[e]piphanies,  like  intentionality,  are  the  bridge  between  our  consciousness  and  reality. The difference is that intentionality is an essential and continuous  structure  of  consciousness,  whereas  epiphanies  are  evanescent, discontinuous, and mysterious” 

In Joyce’s world epiphanies are of much importance because they deal with conscious mind, continuous and discontinuous structures. If we take a look at Ulysses , he is not concerned with constructing the outside world rather his thoughts, desires, speech acts and epiphanic revelations help construct the map of the world. In the case of Dublin , the city is deemed as an intentional cognitive object. It is constructed on discontinuous patterns which gradually turns to solid continuous narrative.  

One of Joyce’s modernist approaches is the use of myths and projecting and old story onto a modern plain. His eminent novel Ulysses also revolves around a mythical search for a father that grabs the whole narrative firmly. In A   Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , the character of Stephan Dedalus is both Telemachus, the lost son and Dedalus, a mythical figure. In Dubliners and Portrait mythicism is mixed with naturalistic current.  

Joyce’s work had an influence on the French Symbolists. He makes use of symbols not only in poetry but also in prose. He recollects them from nature as in The portrait, flying of birds, nests and escapes recur. In Dubliner ‘windows’ are the threshold between internal upheavals and external phenomena.  This novel constantly mentions darkness and dusk which represent gloom and sorrow of the character. At certain places food is also used as a symbol that adheres to monotonous routine life to sustain life. 

Themes in Joyce’s works

Psychological realism.

Joyce’s mastery in fabricating narratives is unmatched. He let flow from his pen random and useful thoughts just as they actually are. This approach to writing is called psychological realism. It leads to analyse the inner thoughts of the characters and how they perceive the realities of the world. 

In A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man Joyce followed Stephen’s life from childhood through adolescence to manhood using one of the most artistic and remarkable techniques ever used in English Novel . Stephen grew up amid various family problems consequently he began to disdain his family, religion, and nation.

Just like other modernists, he was interested in modern psychoanalysis, cultural experimentation and other artistic trends in the field of arts. He particularly touched the themes of sexual oppressiveness, social taboos and dualistic moral values. 

Finnegans Wake, a bolder text of technical innovations is dazed with a web of allusions. Joyce considered this novel a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature. It possesses almost all the characteristics of modernism: engagement with myth and history, complexity and iterative form, obscurity and a sense of humor.  

Nationalism

Though Joyce rejected nationalistic attitude in his writing yet nearly all the works are set in Dublin, the capital of Ireland. He rejected his country and remarked ‘I’m sick of my own country, sick of it’. This shows his reaction to the repressive environment of the country.

Dublin is portrayed as a walker´s city in all the works of Joyce. As in Dubliners and Ulysses the characters are seen to travel on their feet or by cab or tram. Joyce has portrayed Dublin as a center of geographical, religious, political and cultural trends. This kind of new nationalism is a part of Joyce’s satiric impatience, especially in Dubliners .  

Most part of Joyce’s life was spent in abroad countries especially in Europe. He made the choice of voluntary exile out of nausiase created by fanatics. He lived in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. He came upon the screen as the most cosmopolitan Irish writer for his open mindedness. Joyce preferred the life exile upon patriotic writers. He was of the view that an artist had to be an outlander in order to observe the outside world objectively. 

As we can find in his novel The portrait of an Artist as a Young Man , his representative character Stephen who escapes from his own country to find intellectual wisdom and spiritual wisdom.  

Catholicism

Joyce schooling was done in a Jesuits school. This training sets the stance for his literary and philosophical viewpoints. In the opening of the novel Ulysses , Buck Mulligan sets a half serious and half ironic tone against Catholicism. Religion in terms of repentance, guilt and sin dominates all over his thematic constructions.

His mouthpiece character Stephen Dedalus in The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man attacks the “essentialized collective identity” of Catholic Church. He admired Giordano Bruno for recognizing science from the level above from religion and questioning its authorities. 

Works Of James Joyce

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Short Stories

• English Literature
• Short Stories
• Literary Terms
• Web Stories

James Joyce’s Biography and Work

Table of Contents

James Joyce was a renowned Irish writer, considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. His works often explore themes of alienation, disillusionment, and the search for meaning in a complex, changing world. In this essay, we will take a closer look at Joyce’s biography and work, examining the key events that shaped his life and the major literary contributions he made to the world of literature.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, the eldest of ten children. His father, John Joyce, was a financially struggling civil servant, and his mother, Mary Jane Murray, was a devout Catholic who influenced Joyce’s early education. Joyce attended several Catholic schools in Dublin, including Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College, where he excelled academically.

James Joyce’s Biography and Work:- After leaving school, Joyce attended University College Dublin, where he studied English, French, and Italian. During this time, he became involved in the Irish Literary Revival, a movement that sought to promote Irish culture and literature. Joyce contributed to several literary magazines, including Dana, where he published his first short story, “The Sisters,” in 1904.

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In 1904, Joyce met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway who was working as a maid in Dublin. The two fell in love and decided to leave Ireland together. They first moved to Trieste, a city in northeastern Italy, where Joyce worked as an English teacher. They later moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where Joyce wrote most of his major works.

James Joyce’s Biography and Work:- Joyce’s writing career was often hindered by financial difficulties and health problems. He suffered from various eye ailments throughout his life, and his daughter Lucia was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1930s. Despite these challenges, Joyce continued to write and publish his work, earning international acclaim for his innovative style and unique perspective on modern life.

Joyce died on January 13, 1941, in Zurich, Switzerland, at the age of 58, from a perforated ulcer. He is buried in Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich.

Joyce’s writing career spanned over three decades, during which he produced several major works that revolutionized the world of literature. Below, we will discuss some of his most notable works and their contributions to modern literature.

1. Dubliners (1914)

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories that explore the lives of ordinary people in Dublin, Ireland. The stories are set in various neighborhoods and depict characters from different social classes, providing a cross-section of Dublin’s society. The stories are marked by Joyce’s use of stream of consciousness, a literary technique that seeks to capture the inner thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur.

James Joyce’s Biography and Work:- Dubliners is considered a landmark in modernist literature for its depiction of everyday life and the use of stream of consciousness. The stories are also notable for their themes of paralysis and epiphany, as characters struggle to break free from the constraints of their society and find meaning in their lives.

2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a young man from Dublin who struggles to find his identity as an artist in a conservative, Catholic society. The novel is divided into five chapters, each representing a different stage in Stephen’s development.

James Joyce’s Biography and Work:- The novel is characterized by its use of stream of consciousness and its exploration of themes such as alienation, rebellion, and artistic expression. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is considered one of Joyce’s most important works and a landmark in modernist literature.

Themes and Style

Joyce’s works are known for their exploration of complex themes and the human condition. Some of the major themes present in his work include:

• Alienation: Joyce’s characters often feel disconnected from the world around them and struggle to find their place in society.
• Religion: Joyce was raised as a Catholic and his works often grapple with the role of religion in modern life.
• Identity: Joyce’s characters often struggle to define themselves and find meaning in their lives.
• Nationalism: Joyce was deeply interested in Irish culture and history, and his works often explore the complexities of Irish identity and nationalism.

Joyce’s writing style is characterized by its experimentation and innovation. Some of the key stylistic features of his work include:

• Stream of consciousness: Joyce was one of the pioneers of the stream of consciousness technique, which seeks to capture the inner thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur.
• Epiphany: Joyce’s characters often experience moments of epiphany, where they suddenly see the world in a new light and gain insight into their own lives.
• Allusion: Joyce’s works are filled with literary, historical, and cultural allusions that enrich the meaning and depth of his writing.
• Wordplay: Joyce was a master of wordplay and often used puns, word associations, and other linguistic devices to create layers of meaning in his work.

James Joyce’s Biography and Work:- Non-linear narrative: Joyce’s works often play with the conventions of linear narrative, jumping back and forth in time and using multiple narrators to create a more complex and nuanced portrayal of his characters and their experiences.

James Joyce was a significant figure in modernist literature, renowned for his exploration of complex themes and innovative writing style. His works, including Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, are considered landmarks in modernist literature for their use of stream of consciousness, allusion, and non-linear narrative, as well as their exploration of themes such as alienation, religion, sexuality, identity, and nationalism. Despite facing many challenges in his personal and professional life, Joyce continued to write and produce groundbreaking work that has had a lasting impact on the literary world. His legacy continues to inspire writers and readers alike, making him one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century.

Q. What is James Joyce known for?

Ans. James Joyce is known for his innovative writing style, which includes the use of stream of consciousness, allusion, and non-linear narrative. He is also known for his exploration of complex themes, such as alienation, religion, sexuality, identity, and nationalism.

Q. What are some of James Joyce’s most famous works?

Ans. Some of James Joyce’s most famous works include Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses.

Q. What is stream of consciousness writing?

Ans. Stream of consciousness is a writing technique that seeks to capture the inner thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur. It often involves the use of free association and non-linear narrative.

Q. What is the significance of James Joyce’s use of allusion in his writing?

Ans. James Joyce’s use of allusion enriches the meaning and depth of his writing by referencing literary, historical, and cultural figures and events. It also allows him to create complex layers of meaning and symbolism within his work.

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