James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce

          Biography

James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions.

James Joyce was born in Dublin, on February 2, 1882, as the son of John Stanislaus Joyce, an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Murray, was ten years younger than her husband. She was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of their poverty, the family struggled to maintain a solid middle-class facade.

Joyce's first publication was an essay on Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he also began writing lyric poems.

After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. He spent a year in France, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying.

 Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid who he married in 1931.

Joyce published Dubliners in 1914,

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, a play Exilesin 1918 and Ulysses in 1922. In 1907 Joyce had published a collection of poems, Chamber Music.

At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zürich.

Next to Virginia Woolf, he is one of the two most prominent modernist artists. He is a contemporary of Virginia Woolf, both were born and both died in the same years.

His entire work represents a rebellion against tradition, namely against Catholicism, which was deeply rooted in Ireland.

He had an offer just like Stephen Dedalus and just like Dedalus, he refused because he was drawn to the art, again, just like Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego.

He was under a strong influence of Henry Ibsen, who promoted in his works a very modernist idea of the need of each individual to break free from the tradition. That is something that appealed to James Joyce, and he became a rebel breaking without mercy all ties with the tradition. He was not afraid like Clarissa Dalloway to betray the expectations of his family, his teachers, his society, probably because being a man, it was easier to him. He felt himself constantly constraint by the norm and rules.

            A Portrait of Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first serious novel, where the technique of the stream of consciousness and interior monologue are employed.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. As a young boy, Stephen's Catholic faith and Irish nationality heavily influence him.

  

Stephen's father, Simon, is inept with money, and the family sinks deeper and deeper into debt.

 After a summer spent in the company of his Uncle Charles, Stephen learns that the family cannot afford to send him back to Clongowes, and that they will instead move to Dublin. Stephen starts attending a prestigious day school called Belvedere, where he grows to excel as a writer and as an actor in the student theater.

His first sexual experience, with a young Dublin prostitute, unleashes a storm of guilt and shame in Stephen, as he tries to reconcile his physical desires with the stern Catholic morality of his surroundings. For a while, he ignores his religious upbringing, throwing himself with debauched abandon into a variety of sins—masturbation, gluttony, and more visits to prostitutes, among others.

Then, on a three-day religious retreat, Stephen hears a trio of fiery sermons about sin, judgment, and hell.

Deeply shaken, the young man decides to (resolves to= rededicate himself to a life of Christian piety.

Stephen begins attending Mass every day, becoming a model of Catholic piety, abstinence, and self-denial.

-His religious devotion is so pronounced that the director of his school asks him to consider entering the priesthood.

After briefly considering the offer, Stephen realizes that the austerity of the priestly life is utterly incompatible with his love for sensual beauty.

That day, Stephen learns from his sister that the family will be moving, once again for financial reasons. Stephen goes for a walk on the beach, where he observes a young girl wading in the tide. He is struck by her beauty, and realizes, in a moment of epiphany, that the love and desire of beauty should not be a source of shame.

Stephen resolves to live his life to the fullest, and vows not to be constrained by the boundaries of his family, his nation, and his religion.

Stephen moves on to the university, where he develops a number of strong friendships, and is especially close with a young man named Cranly. In a series of conversations with his companions, Stephen works to formulate his theories about art.

While he is dependent on his friends as listeners,

he is also determined to create an independent existence, liberated from the expectations of friends and family.

He becomes more and more determined to free himself from all limiting pressures, and eventually decides to leave Ireland to escape them.

Like his namesake, the mythical Daedalus, Stephen hopes to build himself wings on which he can fly above all obstacles and achieve a life as an artist.