James Joyce: LIFE AND WORKS

« James Joyce LIFE AND WORKS The most radical innovator of 20th century writing, James Joyce, was born in Dublin in 1882.

He was educate at Jesuit schools.

He studied French, Italian and German and graduated in modern languages.

He thought of himself as a European rather than an Irishman.

His attitude differed from that of his literary contemporaries who were leading the Irish Renaissance and were trying to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity in order to create a national conscience.

Joyce, on the contrary , believed that the only way to build Ireland’s awareness was by offering a realistic portrait of its life from a European, cosmopolitan point of view.

He spent some time in Paris but his mother’s fatal illness brought him back to Dublin. In June 1904 , he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle.

They had their first date on 16 th June, which later became the “Bloomsday” of Ulysses .

In October, they moved to Trieste, where he began teaching English and made friends with Italo Svevo.

The years in Trieste were difficult, filled with disappointment and financial problems. Among his major works, we can mention Chamber Music , a collection of 36 short poems ; Dubliners , a collection of 15 short stories all about Dublin and Dublin’ s life; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , his semi -autobiographical novel in which there are hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness and interior monologue; Exiles , his only play and Ulysses , his landmark work which was publishe d in Paris in 1922, in the USA in 1934 and in Britain in 1936. Hitler st arted to advance in Europe so Joyce fled from France t o neutral Switzerland where he died in January 1941. ORDINARY DUBLIN Joyce set all his works in Ireland and mostly in Dublin.

His aim was to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives.

By portraying these ordinary Dubliners, he succeeded in representing the whole of. »