James Joyce

I

Introduction

James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, short-story writer, and poet, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Joyce’s remarkable psychological perception and use of innovative literary techniques revolutionized the novel.

II

Early Works

Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. He was educated at Jesuit schools, where he won prizes in national competitions and gained a solid background in languages, and religious and scholastic teachings. On entering University College, Dublin, Joyce rejected Catholicism and lost his enthusiasm for formal education. He published articles in the Fortnightly Review, including “Ibsen’s New Drama”, which earned a note of thanks from Ibsen, and “The Day of the Rabblement”, in which he distanced himself from the Irish Literary Revival, a movement championed by W. B. Yeats, among others, but viewed by Joyce to be counter-productive. After completing a degree in modern languages, Joyce went to Paris to study medicine, but returned soon afterwards when he learnt that his mother was dying.

Joyce published book reviews in the Dublin Daily Express, tried his hand at a career in singing, and began to write down episodes from his daily life. June 16, 1904, the day he fell in love with Nora Barnacle, was later immortalized as “Bloomsday”, the day on which his masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), takes place. Joyce and Nora left Ireland for Europe in October of the same year to begin life as expatriates, living in Switzerland, Italy, and France. His reasons for choosing self-exile may be read in the declaration made by his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916): “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my Church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.”

Joyce’s first book, Chamber Music (1907), contains 36 highly finished love poems that Joyce wrote to be sung. They reflect the influence of Elizabethan lyricists and the English lyric poets of the 1890s. They also reflect Joyce’s love of the vocal music that influenced all his writing, and is especially evident in his later works that lend themselves particularly well to being read aloud. Although he had rejected Dublin and Catholicism, both were central to his writing. Irish publishers, in particular, repeatedly rejected his work on the grounds that it was libellous and blasphemous. He earned a living from jobs as a language instructor, through writing articles for various newspapers, and from gifts made by friends and later patrons. W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound were two supporters who used their influence to find publishers willing to take Joyce’s work.

The fruits of his recorded observations of life in Dublin first appeared in Dubliners (1914). He revealed the extraordinary in everyday life in episodes from childhood to maturity in this collection of 15 finely crafted short stories. Each story contains a point, phrase, or symbol that encapsulates the essence of a complicated experience, which Joyce called an epiphany. The realism that worried the publishers (and delayed publication) was accomplished in part by dispensing with the traditional authorial voice and allowing the characters’ thoughts and words to tell the story. In “The Sisters”, Joyce displays his interest in the resonance of language, as a young boy considers the impending demise of his old friend, Father Flynn:

This reference to paralysis marks the first appearance of a theme that dominates Dubliners and recurs throughout Joyce’s later works: a paralysis of the hearts and minds of Dubliners and of all aspects of Irish society.

Patronage ensured the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), which first appeared in serial form in the literary review, The Egoist. It is largely an autobiographical novel; the story of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, recreates Joyce’s youth and home life up to his decision to leave Ireland. Joyce focuses on important episodes that shape Stephen’s artistic development and makes considerable use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, a device that renders all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of a character with scrupulous psychological realism. For example, when Dedalus casually looks up to watch birds fly, his thoughts shift from considering their type, number, aerial acrobatics, and the sound of their cries, to the philosophical connection between birds and the intellect. When he ponders the antiquity of the act of watching the birds, the Egyptian god, Thoth, and an image of his modern, Irish equivalent spring to mind. Dedalus then experiences a feeling of connection with birds’ migratory habits and his own decision to leave Ireland with the following result:

III

Later Works

Joyce wrote one play, Exiles (1918), in which he continued to explore the artist’s estrangement from society. He attained international fame with the publication of Ulysses (1922), a notoriously complex novel that took him seven years to complete. He employed the stream-of-consciousness technique in this work as a remarkable means of character portrayal, combining it with the mimicry of ordinary speech and the parody of literary styles. Using experimental techniques to convey the essential nature of realistic situations, Joyce merged the literary traditions of Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism. He scrutinized every detail, transforming the trivial into the significant and symbolic, and made intricate connections between his characters and literary and historical figures. The book is rich in references to astronomy, Irish legend, theology, and Latin, Gaelic, and European history.

Joyce’s passion for the tone and texture of language is fully realized in this work. The dominant theme of Ulysses is again one of exile: from home, family, and religion. The plan of this novel is based on the Odyssey by Homer; each chapter parallels episodes from the epic, albeit obscurely. It is primarily concerned with one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus. Bloom looks for fulfilment in a symbolic search for a son, and Dedalus through his growing sense of dedication as a writer. Molly, in a soliloquy of one long, unbroken sentence, appears to succeed where the men fail, in finding satisfaction in saying “Yes” to love and life:

The innovations in Ulysses broke with traditional rules governing the novel. It had a mixed reception from critics who called it everything from obscene and unintelligible to a masterpiece and a landmark in the history of modern fiction. Nowadays it has the status of a masterpiece and is seen as central to the Modernist tradition.

Joyce published two collections of verse, Pomes Penyeach (1927), and Collected Poems (1936), before he finished his most complex work, Finnegans Wake (1939), in which Joyce attempted to embody a cyclical theory of history. The novel is written in the form of an interrupted series of dreams during one night in the life of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Symbolizing all humanity, Earwicker, his family, and his acquaintances blend, as characters do in dreams, with one another and with various historical and mythical figures. Joyce carried his linguistic experimentation to its furthest point in this novel by writing English as a composite language based on combinations of parts of words from various languages. During the 17 years it took to complete, this novel was known as Work in Progress, with parts of it appearing in several magazines. Joyce was exhausted by the effort of writing Finnegans Wake. Despite many eye operations over the years, he was nearly blind at its finish, and relied on friends, Samuel Beckett among them, to help with revisions. He was discouraged by the book’s reception, which included complaints from many of his old patrons and literary associates who judged it to be completely incomprehensible. Joyce’s last text remains an enigmatic work that places great demands on the reader.

After 20 years in Paris, Joyce was forced to flee France when the Germans invaded. He moved to Zurich where he died on January 13, 1941. Stephen Hero, an early and more conventional version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published posthumously in 1944.