James Joyce ( )

Education Father falling from gentility Catholic education (6-9 at Clongowes, at Belvedere College—all Jesuit institutions, usually for priesthood)—studies modern languages at University College, Dublin

Personal Life heavy drinker/ numerous patrons /eye problem anti-Philistine 3 great influences on Joyce ’ s writing: music (popular lyrics of Ireland) + Roman Catholicism + political and literary exile

Rebellion and Exile for his literary mission, exile is a necessary condition for him to write —“ To preserve his integrity, to avoid involvement in popular sentimentalities and dishonesties, and above all to be able to re-create with both total understanding and total objectivity the Dublin life he knew so well, he felt that he had to go abroad. ”

Entanglement with Home “ No writers has ever been more soaked in Dublin, its atmosphere, its history, its topography; in spite of doing most of his writing in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, he wrote only and always about Dublin. ” Dublin as a microcosm of all human experience

Marriage with Nora in France with Nora Barnacle (met in 6/16/1904 “ Bloomsday, ” a woman with native vivacity and peasant wit) — not married until 1931 — moved to Switzerland in 1940, died in Zurich

Dubliners (1914) First phrase: a collection of poems — Chamber Music (1907); a play — Exiles (1918) Dubliners: “ a book about human fate as well as a series of sketches of Dublin ” “ he had to come directly to terms with the life he has rejected, to see it for what it was and for what it meant ”

Moral Paralysis in Ireland “ describes what Joyce saw as the ‘ moral paralysis ’ of a nation: its bewitchment by the clergy and its bondage to both English tyranny and to its own sense of the past. ” “ simony ”— the buying and selling of sacred things: Joyce feels that Dubliners have given up their birthright of freedom for the guarantees of middle-class security and a Heaven after death. ”

Portrait (1916) second phrase —“ to come to terms with the meaning of his own development as a man dedicated to writing ” first draft Stephen Hero (1944) — almost burned it 1911 presenting the relation between the artist and society in the modern world

Title “ It is ‘ a ’ portrait, one of many that could have been painted: the novel focuses upon the growth of the protagonist ’ s mind, pursuing in a labyrinthine but progressive manner his quest for the liberated condition of the incipient artist. Also, since Stephen is to become an ‘ artist ’ it is mandatory that his tale be told pictorially, that the reader perceive the wholeness of Joyce ’ s vision. ”

Literary Tradition the novel is unified by “ devices common to painting (and music): motifs and symbols ” as a young man, still not fully mature--in the tradition of the Bildungsroman and Kunstlerroman

Theory of Art from the lyric form (the simplest, personal expression of an instant of emotion) to narrative form to the dramatic objectivity (the poetic aesthetics of 1890s) + anti-middleclass values as in Matthew Arnold + artist ’ s independence leads to alienation

Key Phrases “ Ireland is the old sow that eats up her farrow. ” “ The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. ”

Ulysses (1922) It takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904 (Bloomsday). Joyce first thought of the idea in 1906 as a story for Dubliners. — became the sequel to Stephen Hero Joyce included hundreds of puzzles that can only be understood by very careful reconstruction of exactly what each character is thinking and doing. Banned after its publication--1933/12/6 Judge Woolsey lifted the ban in the US

Joyce and Homer Main characters: Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus-- correspond to Homer's Odysseus (aka Ulysses), Penelope, and Telemachus Each of the 18 chapters corresponds to one of Odysseus's (or Telemachus's) adventures. Each chapter is written in a different style, with symbolism appropriate to the corresponding adventure.

Joyce and the Creation

Joyce in Paris