James
Joyce - Life and Works
One
of the most influential writers of the 20th Century, James Joyce
is one of Ireland's most prominent authors, whose works include
the Dubliners, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
James
Joyce is closely linked with Ireland's capital city Dublin,
where the writer was born and lived as a young man and where most
of his novels are set, though Joyce spent most of his life outside
Ireland.
James
Joyce was born in 1882, in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was
the eldest of ten surviving children in an educated middle class
Catholic family. After moving to the fashionable Dublin area of
Bray in 1887, the family's prosperity fell into decline, due
to the father's alcoholism and they were declared bankrupt
by 1893.
Initially
Joyce enjoyed a prestigious education at a boarding school in County
Kildare, until 1892, when his father could no longer afford
the fees. Joyce was then schooled at the Christian Brother's
school on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before being enrolled at
the Jesuit Belvedere School in 1893, with the hope of joining the
Order. However Joyce was later to renounce Catholicism. In 1898,
Joyce enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin,
where he studied English, French and Italian and took an active
role in Dublin's theatrical and literary circles.
After
graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce headed to Paris to study medicine,
but returned to Ireland after his mother was diagnosed with cancer.
After her death Joyce began drinking heavily, scraping a living
teaching and reviewing books. He had a draft of A Portrait of the
Artist as Young Man turned down in 1904 and later in that same year
met the woman he would later marry, - a young chambermaid from Connemara,
in Co.
Galway named Nora Barnacle. Their first date together was 16th
June 1904, a date that would be later commemorated in Joyce's
most famous work Ulysses.
Shortly
after they met James and Nora eloped to Europe, where Joyce planned
to teach English. The couple moved first to Zurich, then to Trieste
where they remained for the next ten years. During World War One,
Joyce moved back to Zurich, where he met Ezra Pound, who brought
him into contact with his future publisher and patron Harriet Shaw
Weaver. Joyce then moved to Paris in 1920, where he would live for
the next 20 years until returning to Zurich to escape Nazi occupation
in 1940. In 1941 Joyce underwent surgery on a perforated ulcer,
but following complications died on 13th January. James Joyce is
buried in Zurich's Fluntern Cemetery along with his wife Nora,
whom he married in 1931 and their eldest son George.
At
the time Joyce's writings were both praised and derided for
adopting stream of consciousness, internal monologue and other literary
features that were new for the time. Joyce's subject matter
also courted controversy, and were criticised as vulgar and obscene.
Nevertheless
James Joyce is heralded as one of the most influential writers of
his generation and a doyen of modernist literary thought. His work
has influenced a range of writers from William Burroughs, Anthony
Burgess and Irish born playwright Samuel
Beckett, who was a close friend and colleague of Joyce, assisting
him on Finnegan's Wake.
Joyce's
major works include the Dubliners, published in 1914. This collection
of short stories, where according to Joyce, ‘epiphanies'
and a detailed analysis of Dublin society. The most famous story,
The Dead was made into a film in1987, the last to be directed by
John Huston. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is a largely
autobiographical, coming of age novel surrounding the main character
Stephen Dedalus - Joyce's self-depiction. Joyce's
final novel was Finnegan's Wake, (1939) which was published
as a series in literary magazine Transition under the title Working
Project. The book draws on a range of languages and word plays and
is regarded as Joyce's most difficult work.
Joyce's
most famous novel, regarded as his masterpiece is Ulysses (1922).
The story developed from an original idea for a short story to appear
in the Dubliners. Set over 18 chapters, the story revolves around
a day in the life of Jewish advertising canvasser, Leopold Bloom.
Each chapter represents an hour of that day, as Bloom traverses
Dublin's diverse social landscape, in a parody of Homer's
Odyssey (Ulysses being the Latinised name for Odysseus). The day
is 16th June 1904 and begins with young writer Stephen Dedalus living
inside the Martello tower at Dublin Bay. The narrative shifts to
the main character Leopold Bloom as his day takes him on a meandering
tour th rough the streets of Dublin stopping Davy Byrne's
Pub, the National Library, and various pubs dotted around Dublin's
red light district.
When
Ulysses was first serialized in the New York literary journal The
Little Review, it led to a prosecution for obscenity. When the book
was published in its entirety in Paris it caused outrage and was
banned in the US and the UK and blacklisted by Irish customs. This
failed to diminish its popularity however and the book is now regarded
as a masterpiece of modernist literature and the archetypal Irish
novel. In 1999 the Modern Library listed Ulysses as the best English
language novel of the 20th Century.
Ulysses
is celebrated in Dublin and by fans throughout the world, on 16th
June with Bloomsday.
The event boasts a range of cultural activities from live recitals
and street theatre bringing to life the characters from the novel,
in full Edwardian costume. If there is ever a time for James Joyce
fans to visit Dublin Bloomsday on the 16th June is most certainly
it.
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