James Joyce(1882 — 1941)
James Joyce
Irlande, France, Royaume-Uni
6 min read
James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish writer, one of the major figures of literary modernism. His novel *Ulysses* (1922), which transposes Homer's *Odyssey* into a single day in Dublin, revolutionized narrative through its stream-of-consciousness technique.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on 2 February 1882 in Dublin, Ireland
- Publishes the short-story collection *Dubliners* in 1914
- Brings out the autobiographical novel *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* in 1916
- Publishes *Ulysses* in 1922 in Paris, long banned for obscenity in English-speaking countries
- Dies on 13 January 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland
Works & Achievements
Joyce's first collection of poems, highly musical, revealing his singer's ear.
A collection of fifteen short stories depicting the everyday life of Dubliners; it closes with the masterpiece “The Dead.”
A partly autobiographical coming-of-age novel that follows Stephen Dedalus's awakening to his calling as an artist.
Joyce's only play, exploring the themes of love, jealousy, and freedom.
His masterpiece: a single day in Dublin (16 June 1904) that re-enacts Homer's Odyssey and revolutionizes the novel through interior monologue.
An experimental novel written over seventeen years, made of a dreamlike language blending dozens of tongues and countless puns.
Anecdotes
On 16 June 1904, Joyce went out for the first time with Nora Barnacle, who would become his lifelong partner. He chose this date as the single day on which all the action of *Ulysses* takes place. Today, every 16 June, admirers from all over the world celebrate “Bloomsday” by rereading the novel in the streets of Dublin.
Deemed obscene, *Ulysses* was banned for years in the United States and the United Kingdom. The book first appeared in Paris in 1922, published by the American bookseller **Sylvia Beach**. In 1933, an American judge finally lifted the ban, ruling that it was not a work of pornography but a genuine work of art.
Joyce suffered all his life from severe eye diseases and underwent many operations, coming close to blindness. He often wore a patch over one eye and wrote with thick coloured pencils on large sheets of paper. He sometimes put on a white jacket so that the light would reflect better onto his page.
At the age of 22, Joyce left Ireland and would almost never return, living in turn in **Trieste**, **Zurich** and **Paris**. Yet he never wrote about anything but Dublin, declaring that he wanted to give such a complete picture of it that, from his books, one could rebuild the entire city if it ever disappeared.
His final book, *Finnegans Wake*, took him seventeen years of work. In it Joyce invents thousands of words by blending dozens of different languages, creating a text so strange and difficult that it remains one of the most mysterious works in all of literature.
Primary Sources
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Key Places
Joyce's birthplace and the unique setting for all his work, from Dubliners to Ulysses. He made it the literary capital of his imagination even while living abroad.
Joyce lived here for about a decade, earning a living as an English teacher at the Berlitz school. It was here that he wrote much of his early work.
The hub of the 1920s avant-garde, Paris saw the publication of Ulysses by Sylvia Beach and of Finnegans Wake. Joyce spent nearly twenty years there.
A refuge for Joyce during both World Wars, Zurich was also the city where he died in 1941. He is buried there in Fluntern Cemetery.
This watchtower, where Joyce stayed for a few days in 1904, opens the novel Ulysses. Now the James Joyce Museum, it is today a major site for Bloomsday celebrations.