James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. Joyce's novel '' Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914) and the novels '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.

Born in Dublin into a middle-class family, Joyce attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Belvedere College and graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pola (now in Croatia) and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce lived there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems ''Chamber Music'' and his short-story collection ''Dubliners'', and began serially publishing ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' in the English magazine '' The Egoist''. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zurich, Switzerland, and worked on ''Ulysses''. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and in 1920 moved to Paris, which was his primary residence until 1940.

''Ulysses'' was first published in Paris in 1922, but its publication in the United Kingdom and the United States was prohibited because of its perceived obscenity. Copies were smuggled into both countries and pirated versions were printed until the mid-1930s, when publication became legal. ''Ulysses'' frequently ranks high in lists of the greatest books, and academic literature analysing Joyce's work is extensive and ongoing. Many writers, film-makers, and other artists have been influenced by his stylistic innovations, such as his meticulous attention to detail, use of interior monologue, wordplay, and the radical transformation of traditional plot and character development.

Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, his fictional universe centres on Dublin and is largely populated by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. ''Ulysses'' is set in the city's streets and alleyways. Joyce said: "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."

In 1923, Joyce started his next major work, ''Finnegans Wake''. It was published in 1939. Between these years, he travelled widely. He and Nora were married in a civil ceremony in London in 1931. He made several trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia. When Germany occupied France during World War II, Joyce moved back to Zurich in 1940. He died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer at age 58.

Early life

Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland, to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane "May" ( Murray). He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings. He was baptised as James Augustine Joyce according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Reverend John O'Mulloy. His godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. The Joyce family came from Fermoy in County Cork, where they owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Her family claimed kinship with the political leader Daniel O'Connell, who had helped secure Catholic emancipation for the Irish in 1829.

John Stanislaus Joyce was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation in 1887. The family moved to the fashionable small town of Bray, from Dublin. Joyce was attacked by a dog around this time, causing a lifelong fear of dogs. He later developed a fear of thunderstorms from a superstitious aunt who had called them a sign of God's wrath.

In 1891, nine-year-old Joyce wrote " Et Tu, Healy", a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell that his father printed and distributed to friends. The poem expressed the sentiments of the elder Joyce, who was angry at Parnell's apparent betrayal by the Irish Catholic Church, the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the British Liberal Party that resulted in a collaborative failure to secure Irish Home Rule in the British Parliament. This sense of betrayal, particularly by the Church, left a lasting impression that Joyce expressed in his life and art.

That year, his family began to slide into poverty, worsened by his father's drinking and financial mismanagement. John Joyce's name was published in '' Stubbs' Gazette'', a blacklist of debtors and bankrupts, in November 1891, and he was temporarily suspended from work. In January 1893, he was dismissed with a reduced pension.

Joyce began his education in 1888 at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, but had to leave in 1891 when his father could no longer pay the fees. He studied at home and briefly attended the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin. Joyce's father then had a chance meeting with the Jesuit priest John Conmee, who knew the family. Conmee arranged for Joyce and his brother Stanislaus to attend the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, without fees starting in 1893. In 1895, Joyce, now 13, was elected by his peers to join the Sodality of Our Lady. Joyce spent five years at Belvedere, his intellectual formation guided by the principles of Jesuit education laid down in the '' Ratio Studiorum'' (''Plan of Studies''). He won first place for English composition in his final two years before graduating in 1898.

University years

Joyce enrolled at University College in 1898 to study English, French and Italian. While there, he was exposed to the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, which had a strong influence on his thought for the rest of his life. He participated in many of Dublin's theatrical and literary circles. His closest colleagues included leading Irish figures of his generation, such as George Clancy, Tom Kettle and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Many of the acquaintances he made at this time appeared in his work. His first publication—a laudatory review of Henrik Ibsen's '' When We Dead Awaken''—was printed in '' The Fortnightly Review'' in 1900. Inspired by Ibsen's works, Joyce sent him a fan letter in Norwegian and wrote a play, ''A Brilliant Career'', which he later destroyed.

In 1901 the National Census of Ireland listed Joyce as a 19-year-old Irish- and English-speaking unmarried student living with his parents, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road) in Clontarf, Dublin. During this year he became friends with Oliver St. John Gogarty, the model for Buck Mulligan in ''Ulysses''. In November, Joyce wrote an article, ''The Day of the Rabblement'', criticising the Irish Literary Theatre for its unwillingness to produce the works of playwrights like Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, and Gerhart Hauptmann. He protested against nostalgic Irish populism and argued for an outward-looking, cosmopolitan literature. Because he mentioned Gabriele D'Annunzio's novel ('' The Flame''), which was on the Roman Catholic list of prohibited books, his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce and Sheehy-Skeffington—who had also had an article rejected—had their essays jointly printed and distributed. Arthur Griffith decried the censorship of Joyce's work in his newspaper '' United Irishman''.

Joyce graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in October 1902. He considered studying medicine and began attending lectures at the Catholic University Medical School in Dublin. When the medical school refused to provide a tutoring position to help finance his education, he left Dublin to study medicine in Paris, where he received permission to attend the course for a certificate in physics, chemistry, and biology at the École de Médecine. By the end of January 1903 he had given up plans to study medicine, but he stayed in Paris, often reading late in the . He frequently wrote home claiming ill health due to the water, the cold weather, and his change of diet, appealing for money his family could ill afford.

Post-university years in Dublin

In April 1903, Joyce learned his mother was dying and immediately returned to Ireland. He tended to her, reading aloud from drafts that were eventually worked into his unfinished novel '' Stephen Hero''. During her final days, she unsuccessfully tried to get him to make his confession and to take communion. She died on 13 August. Afterwards, Joyce and Stanislaus refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. John Joyce's drinking and abusiveness increased in the months following her death, and the family began to fall apart. Joyce spent much of his time carousing with Gogarty and his medical school colleagues, and tried to scrape together a living by reviewing books.

Joyce's life began to change when he met Nora Barnacle on 10 June 1904. She was a 20-year-old woman from Galway city who was working in Dublin as a chambermaid. They had their first outing together on 16 June 1904, walking through the Dublin suburb of Ringsend, where Nora masturbated him. This event was commemorated as the date for the action of '' Ulysses'', known in popular culture as " Bloomsday" in honour of the novel's main character Leopold Bloom. This began a relationship that continued for 37 years, until Joyce died. Soon after this outing, Joyce, who had been out with his colleagues, approached a young woman in St Stephen's Green and was beaten up by her companion. He was picked up and dusted off by an acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter, who was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, became one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of ''Ulysses''.

Joyce was a talented tenor and explored becoming a musical performer. On 8 May 1904, he was a contestant in the '' Feis Ceoil'', an Irish music competition for promising composers, instrumentalists and singers. In the months before the contest, Joyce took singing lessons with two voice instructors, Benedetto Palmieri and Vincent O'Brien. He paid the entry fee by pawning some of his books. For the contest, Joyce had to sing three songs. He did well with the first two, but when he was told he had to sight read the third, he refused. Joyce won the third-place medal anyway. After the contest, Palmieri wrote to Joyce that Luigi Denza, the composer of the popular song "" who was the judge for the contest, spoke highly of his voice and would have given him first place but for the sight-reading and lack of sufficient training. Palmieri offered to give Joyce free singing lessons. Joyce refused the lessons, but kept singing in Dublin concerts that year. His performance at a concert given on 27 August may have solidified Nora's devotion to him. Although Joyce did not pursue a singing career, he included thousands of musical allusions in his literary works.

Throughout 1904, Joyce sought to develop his literary reputation. On 7 January he attempted to publish a prose work examining aesthetics called ''A Portrait of the Artist'', but it was rejected by the intellectual journal ''Dana''. He then reworked it into a fictional novel of his youth, ''Stephen Hero'', that he laboured over for years but eventually abandoned. He wrote a satirical poem, "The Holy Office", that parodied W. B. Yeats's poem "To Ireland in the Coming Times" and once more mocked the Irish Literary Revival. It too was rejected for publication, this time for being "unholy". He wrote the collection of poems ''Chamber Music'' at this time; which was also rejected. He did publish three poems, one in ''Dana'' and two in '' The Speaker'', and George William Russell published three of Joyce's short stories in the Irish Homestead. These stories—"The Sisters", "Eveline", and "After the Race"—were the beginnings of ''Dubliners''.

In September 1904, Joyce was having difficulties finding a place to live and moved into a Martello tower near Dublin, which Gogarty was renting. Within a week, Joyce left when Gogarty and another housemate, Dermot Chenevix Trench, fired a pistol in the middle of the night at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. With the help of funds from Lady Gregory and a few other acquaintances, Joyce and Nora left Ireland less than a month later.

1904–1906: Zurich, Pola and Trieste

Zurich and Pola

In October 1904, Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile. They briefly stopped in London and Paris to secure funds before heading on to Zurich.
Joyce had been informed through an agent in England that there was a vacancy at the Berlitz Language School, but when he arrived there was no position. The couple stayed in Zurich for a little over a week. The director of the school sent Joyce on to Trieste, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the First World War. There was no vacancy there either. The director of the school in Trieste, Almidano Artifoni, secured a position for him in Pola, then Austria-Hungary's major naval base, where he mainly taught English to naval officers. Less than one month after the couple had left Ireland, Nora had become pregnant. Joyce soon became close friends with Alessandro Francini Bruni, the director of the school at Pola, and his wife Clothilde. By the beginning of 1905, the two families were living together. Joyce kept writing when he could. He completed a short story for ''Dubliners'', "Clay", and worked on his novel ''Stephen Hero''. He disliked Pola, calling it a "back-of-God-speed place—a naval Siberia", and as soon as a job became available, he went to Trieste.

First stay in Trieste

Joyce moved to Trieste in March 1905 aged 23. He taught English at the Berlitz school. That June he published the satirical poem "Holy Office".
After Nora gave birth to their first child, Giorgio, on 27 July 1905, he convinced Stanislaus to move to Trieste and obtained a position for him at the Berlitz school. Stanislaus moved in with Joyce as soon as he arrived that October, although most of his salary went directly to supporting Joyce's family. In February 1906, the Joyce household once more shared an apartment with the Francini Brunis.

During this period Joyce completed 24 chapters of ''Stephen Hero'' and all but the final story of ''Dubliners'', but was unable to get ''Dubliners'' published. Although the London publisher Grant Richards had a contract with Joyce, the printers were unwilling to print passages they found controversial; English law could not protect them if brought to court for circulating indecent language. Richards and Joyce tried to find a solution where the book could avoid legal liability while preserving Joyce's artistic integrity. As they negotiated, Richards began to scrutinise the stories more carefully. He became concerned that the book might damage his publishing house's reputation and eventually backed down from his agreement.

Trieste was Joyce's main residence until 1920; he stayed temporarily in Rome, travelled to Dublin, and emigrated to Zurich during World War I, but Trieste became a second Dublin for him and played an important role in his development as a writer. He completed ''Dubliners,'' reworked ''Stephen Hero'' into ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', wrote his only published play ''Exiles'' and decided to make ''Ulysses'' a full-length novel as he worked through his notes and jottings, working out the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Trieste.
Many of the novel's details were taken from Joyce's observation of the city and its people, and some of its stylistic innovations appear to have been influenced by Futurism. There are even words of the Triestine dialect in ''Finnegans Wake''. Joyce was introduced to the Greek Orthodox liturgy in Trieste. Under its influence, he rewrote his first short story and later drew on it in creating the liturgical parodies in ''Ulysses''.

1906–1915: Rome, Trieste, and sojourns to Dublin

Rome

In late May 1906, the head of the Berlitz school ran away after embezzling its funds. Artifoni took over the school but let Joyce know that he could afford to keep only one brother on. Tired of Trieste and discouraged that he could not get a publisher for ''Dubliners'', Joyce found an advertisement for a correspondence clerk in a Roman bank that paid twice his current salary. He was hired for the position and went to Rome at the end of July.

Joyce felt he accomplished very little during his brief stay in Rome, but it had a large impact on his writing. Though his new job took up most of his time, he revised ''Dubliners'' and worked on ''Stephen Hero''. Rome was the birthplace of the idea for " The Dead", which became the final story of ''Dubliners'', and for ''Ulysses'', which was originally conceived as a short story. His stay in the city was one of his inspirations for ''Exiles''. While there, he read the socialist historian Guglielmo Ferrero in depth. Ferrero's anti-heroic interpretations of history, arguments against militarism, and conflicted attitudes toward Jews found their way into ''Ulysses'', particularly in the character of Leopold Bloom. In London, Elkin Mathews published ''Chamber Music'' on the recommendation of the British poet Arthur Symons. Nonetheless, Joyce was dissatisfied with his job, had exhausted his finances, and realised he would need additional support when he learned Nora was pregnant again. He left Rome after seven months.

Second stay in Trieste

Joyce returned to Trieste in March 1907, but was unable to find full-time work. He went back to being an English instructor, working part-time for Berlitz and giving private lessons. The author Ettore Schmitz, better known by pen name Italo Svevo, was one of his students. Svevo was a Catholic of Jewish origin who became one of the models for Leopold Bloom. Joyce learned much of what he knew about Judaism from him. The two became lasting friends and mutual critics. Svevo supported Joyce's identity as an author, helping him work through his writer's block with ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''. Roberto Prezioso, editor of the Italian newspaper '' Piccolo della Sera'', was another of Joyce's students. He helped Joyce financially by commissioning him to write for the newspaper. Joyce quickly produced three articles aimed toward the Italian irredentists in Trieste. He indirectly paralleled their desire for independence from Austria-Hungary with the struggle against British rule in Ireland. Joyce earned additional money by giving a series of lectures at
Trieste's Università Popolare on Ireland and the arts, as well as on William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''.

In May, Joyce was struck by an attack of rheumatic fever, which left him incapacitated for weeks. The illness exacerbated eye problems that plagued him for the rest of his life. While Joyce was still recovering from the attack, Lucia was born on 26 July 1907. During his convalescence, he was able to finish "The Dead", the last story of ''Dubliners''.

Although a heavy drinker, Joyce gave up alcohol for a period in 1908. He reworked ''Stephen Hero'' as the more concise and interior ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''. He completed the third chapter by April and translated John Millington Synge's '' Riders to the Sea'' into Italian with the help of Nicolò Vidacovich. He even took singing lessons again. Joyce had been looking for an English publisher for ''Dubliners'' but was unable to find one, so he submitted it to a Dublin publisher, Maunsel and Company, owned by George Roberts.

Visits to Dublin

In July 1909, Joyce received a year's advance payment from one of his students and returned to Ireland to introduce Giorgio to both sides of the family, his own in Dublin and Nora's in Galway. He unsuccessfully applied for the position of Chair of Italian at his alma mater, which had become University College Dublin. He met with Roberts, who seemed positive about publishing ''Dubliners''. He returned to Trieste in September with his sister Eva, who helped Nora run the home. Joyce stayed in Trieste for only a month, as he almost immediately came upon the idea of starting a cinema in Dublin, which unlike Trieste had none. He quickly got the backing of some Triestine businessmen and returned to Dublin in October, launching Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph. It was initially well-received, but fell apart after Joyce left. He returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen.

From 1910 to 1912, Joyce still lacked a reliable income. This brought his conflicts with Stanislaus, who was frustrated with lending him money, to their peak. In 1912, Prezioso arranged for him to lecture on Hamlet for the Minerva Society between November 1912 and February 1913. Joyce once more lectured at the Università Popolare on various topics in English literature and applied for a teaching diploma in English at the University of Padua. He performed very well on the qualification tests, but was denied because Italy did not recognise his degree from an Irish university. In mid-1912, Joyce and his family returned to Dublin briefly. While there, his three-year struggle with Roberts over the publication of ''Dubliners'' ended as Roberts refused to publish it due to concerns of libel. Roberts had the printed sheets destroyed, but Joyce obtained a copy of the proof sheets. When Joyce returned to Trieste, he wrote an invective against Roberts, "Gas from a Burner". He never went to Dublin again.

Publication of ''Dubliners'' and ''A Portrait''

Joyce's fortunes changed for the better in 1913 when Richards agreed to publish ''Dubliners''. It was issued on 15 June 1914, eight and a half years since Joyce had first submitted it to him. Around the same time, he found an unexpected advocate in Ezra Pound, who was living in London. On Yeats's advice, Pound wrote to Joyce asking if he could include a poem from ''Chamber Music'', "I Hear an Army Charging upon the Land", in the journal '' Des Imagistes''. They began a correspondence that lasted until the late 1930s. Pound became Joyce's promoter, helping ensure that Joyce's works were published and publicised.

After Pound persuaded Dora Marsden to serially publish ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' in the London literary magazine '' The Egoist'', Joyce's pace of writing increased. He completed ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' by 1914; resumed ''Exiles'', completing it in 1915; started the novelette '' Giacomo Joyce'', which he eventually abandoned; and began drafting ''Ulysses''.

In August 1914, World War I broke out. Although Joyce and Stanislaus were subjects of the United Kingdom, which was now at war with Austria-Hungary, they remained in Trieste. Even when Stanislaus, who had publicly expressed his sympathy for the Triestine irredentists, was interned at the beginning of January 1915, Joyce chose to stay. In May 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, and less than a month later Joyce took his family to Zurich in neutral Switzerland.

1915–1920: Zurich and Trieste

Zurich

Joyce arrived in Zurich as a double exile: he was an Irishman with a British passport and a Triestine on parole from Austria-Hungary. To get to Switzerland, he had to promise the Austro-Hungarian officials that he would not help the Allies during the war, and he and his family had to leave almost all of their possessions in Trieste. During the war, both the British and Austro-Hungarian secret services kept Joyce under surveillance.

Joyce's first concern was earning a living. One of Nora's relatives sent them a small sum to cover the first few months. Pound and Yeats worked with the British government to provide a stipend from the Royal Literary Fund in 1915 and a grant from the British civil list the following year. Eventually, Joyce received large regular sums from the editor Harriet Shaw Weaver, who operated ''The Egoist'', and the psychotherapist Edith Rockefeller McCormick, who lived in Zurich, studying under Carl Jung. Weaver financially supported Joyce for the rest of his life and even paid for his funeral. Between 1917 and the beginning of 1919, Joyce was financially secure and lived quite well; the family sometimes stayed in Locarno in Switzerland's Italian-speaking region. But Joyce's health problems persisted. During their time in Zurich, he and Nora both suffered illnesses diagnosed as "nervous breakdowns", and he underwent many eye surgeries.

Writing ''Ulysses''

During the war, Zurich was the centre of a vibrant expatriate community. Joyce's spent evenings in the Cafe Pfauen, where he got to know some of the artists living in the city, including the sculptor August Suter and the painter Frank Budgen. He often used the time spent with them as material for ''Ulysses''. He met the writer Stefan Zweig, who organised the premiere of ''Exiles'' in Munich in August 1919. He became aware of Dada, which was coming into its own at the Cabaret Voltaire. He may have met the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin at the Cafe Odeon, a place they both frequented.

Joyce kept up his interest in music. He met Ferruccio Busoni, staged music with Otto Luening, and learned music theory from Philipp Jarnach. Much of what Joyce learned about musical notation and counterpoint found its way into ''Ulysses'', particularly the "Sirens" section.

Joyce avoided public discussion of the war and maintained strict neutrality. He made few comments about the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland; although he was sympathetic to the Irish independence movement, he disagreed with its violence. He stayed intently focused on ''Ulysses'' and the struggle to get his work published. Some of the serial instalments of "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in ''The Egoist'' had been censored by the printers, but the entire novel was published by B. W. Huebsch in 1916. In 1918, Pound got a commitment from Margaret Caroline Anderson, the owner and editor of the New York-based literary magazine '' The Little Review'', to publish ''Ulysses'' serially.

The English Players

Joyce co-founded an acting company, the English Players, and became its business manager. The company was pitched to the British government as a contribution to the war effort, and mainly staged works by Irish playwrights, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and John Millington Synge. For Synge's ''Riders to the Sea'', Nora played a principal role and Joyce sang offstage, which he did again when Robert Browning's '' In a Balcony'' was staged. He hoped the company would eventually stage his play, ''Exiles'', but his participation in the English Players declined in the wake of the influenza epidemic of 1918, though the company continued until 1920.

Joyce's work with the English Players involved him in a lawsuit. Henry Wilfred Carr, a wounded war veteran and British consul, accused Joyce of underpaying him for his role in '' The Importance of Being Earnest''. Carr sued for compensation; Joyce countersued for libel. The cases were resolved in 1919, with Joyce winning the compensation case but losing the one for libel. The incident created acrimony between the British consulate and Joyce for the rest of his time in Zurich.

Third stay in Trieste

By 1919, Joyce was in financial difficulty again. McCormick stopped paying her stipend, partly because he refused to be psychoanalysed by Jung, and Zurich had become expensive to live in after the war. He was also becoming isolated as the city's emigres returned home. In October 1919, Joyce's family moved back to Trieste, but it had changed. The Austro-Hungarian empire had ceased to exist, and Trieste was now an Italian city in postwar recovery. Eight months after his return, Joyce went to Sirmione, Italy, to meet Pound, who made arrangements for him to move to Paris. Joyce and his family packed their belongings and headed for Paris in June 1920.

1920–1941: Paris and Zurich

Paris

When Joyce and his family arrived in Paris in July 1920, their visit was intended to be a layover on their way to London. For the first four months, he stayed with and met Sylvia Beach, who ran the Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach quickly became an important person in Joyce's life, providing financial support and becoming one of his publishers. Through Beach and Pound, Joyce quickly joined the intellectual circle of Paris and was integrated into the international modernist artist community. He met Valery Larbaud, who championed Joyce's works to the French and supervised the French translation of ''Ulysses''. Paris became the Joyces' regular residence for 20 years, though they never settled at a single location for long.

Publication of ''Ulysses''

Joyce finished writing ''Ulysses'' near the end of 1921, but had difficulties getting it published. With financial backing from the lawyer John Quinn, Margaret Anderson and her co-editor Jane Heap had begun serially publishing it in ''The Little Review'' in March 1918, but in January and May 1919, two instalments were suppressed as obscene and potentially subversive. In September 1920, an unsolicited instalment of the "Nausicaa" episode was sent to the daughter of a New York attorney associated with the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, leading to an official complaint. The trial proceedings continued until February 1921, when Anderson and Heap, defended by Quinn, were fined $50 each for publishing obscenity and ordered to cease publishing ''Ulysses''. Huebsch, who had expressed interest in publishing the novel in the United States, decided against it after the trial. Weaver was unable to find an English printer, and the novel was banned for obscenity in the United Kingdom in 1922, where it was blacklisted until 1936.

Almost immediately after Anderson and Heap were ordered to stop printing ''Ulysses'', Beach agreed to publish it through her bookshop. She had books mailed to people in Paris and the United States who had subscribed to get a copy; Weaver sent books from Beach's plates to subscribers in England. Soon, the postal officials of both countries began confiscating the books. They were then smuggled into both countries. Because the work had no copyright in the United States at this time, "bootleg" versions appeared, including pirate versions from publisher Samuel Roth, who ceased his actions only in 1928, when a court enjoined publication. ''Ulysses'' was not legally published in the United States until 1934, when Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in '' United States v. One Book Called Ulysses'' that the book is not obscene.

Writing ''Finnegans Wake''

In 1923, Joyce began his next work, an experimental novel that became ''Finnegans Wake''. It took 16 years to complete. At first, Joyce called it ''Work in Progress'', which was the name Ford Madox Ford used in April 1924 when he published its "Mamalujo" episode in his magazine, '' The Transatlantic Review''. In 1926, Eugene and Maria Jolas serialised the novel in their magazine, '' transition''. When parts of the novel first came out, some of Joyce's supporters—like Stanislaus, Pound, and Weaver— wrote unfavourably about it, and it was criticised by writers like Seán Ó Faoláin, Wyndham Lewis, and Rebecca West. In response, Joyce and the Jolases organised the publication of a collection of favourable essays, '' Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress'', to which Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams contributed. An additional purpose of publishing these essays was to market ''Work in Progress'' to a larger audience. Joyce publicly revealed the novel's title as ''Finnegans Wake'' in 1939, the year he completed it. It was published in London by Faber and Faber with the assistance of T. S. Eliot.

Joyce's health problems afflicted him throughout his Paris years. He had over a dozen eye operations, but his vision severely declined. By 1930, he was practically blind in the left eye and his right eye functioned poorly. He had all his teeth removed because of infection. At one point, Joyce became worried that he could not finish ''Finnegans Wake'', asking the Irish author James Stephens to complete it if he became unable.

Joyce's financial problems continued. Although he was now earning a good income from his investments and royalties, his spending habits often left him without available money. Still, he published ''Pomes Penyeach'' in 1927, a collection of 13 poems that he wrote in Trieste, Zurich and Paris.

Marriage in London

In 1930, Joyce began thinking of establishing a residence in London once more, primarily to ensure that Giorgio, who had just married Helen Fleischmann, would have his inheritance secured under British law. Joyce moved to London, obtained a long-term lease on a flat, registered on the electoral roll, and became liable for jury service. After having lived together for 27 years, Joyce and Nora married at the Register Office in Kensington on 4 July 1931. Joyce stayed in London for at least six months to establish his residency, but abandoned his flat and returned to Paris later in the year when Lucia showed signs of mental illness. He planned to return, but never did, and later became disaffected with England.

In later years, Joyce lived in Paris but frequently travelled to Switzerland for eye surgery or for treatment for Lucia, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Jung, who had previously written that ''Ulysses'' was similar to schizophrenic writing. Jung suggested that she and her father were two people going into a river, with Joyce diving and Lucia falling. Despite Joyce's attempts to help Lucia, she remained permanently institutionalised after his death.

Final return to Zurich

In the late 1930s, Joyce became increasingly concerned about the rise of fascism and antisemitism. In 1938, he helped Jews escape Nazi persecution. After the fall of France in 1940, Joyce and his family fled from Nazi occupation, returning to Zurich a final time.

Death

On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zurich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the next day. He awoke at 2 am on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later, at age 58.

His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang "Addio terra, addio cielo" from Monteverdi's ''L'Orfeo'' at the burial service. Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all of his life, and although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, only the British consul attended the funeral. When Frank Cremins, ''chargé d'affaires'' at Bern, informed Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, of Joyce's death, Walshe responded: "Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral." Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent "honour grave", with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.

After Joyce's death, the Irish government declined Nora's request to permit the repatriation of his remains, despite being persistently lobbied by the American diplomat John J. Slocum. In October 2019, a motion was put to Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes. The proposal immediately became controversial, with the '' Irish Times'' commenting: "it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read".

Political views

Throughout his life, Joyce maintained an active interest in Irish politics and the country's relationship to the British Empire. He studied socialism and anarchism. He attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist anarchist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay " The Soul of Man Under Socialism". He described his opinions as "those of a socialist artist". Joyce's direct engagement in politics was strongest during his time in Trieste, when he submitted newspaper articles, gave lectures, and wrote letters advocating for Ireland's independence from British rule. After leaving Trieste, Joyce's direct involvement in politics waned, but his later works still reflect his commitment. He remained sympathetic to individualist anarchism and critical of coercive ideologies such as nationalism. His novels address socialist, anarchist, and Irish nationalist issues. ''Ulysses'' has been read as a critique of the effect of British rule on the Irish people. ''Finnegans Wake'' has been read as an investigation of the divisive issues of Irish politics, the interrelationship between colonialism and race, and the coercive oppression of nationalism and fascism.

Joyce wrote critically of British rule in Ireland and was sympathetic to attempts to establish an independent Irish republic. In 1907, he expressed his support for the early Sinn Féin movement before the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. But Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one. When he had a choice, he renewed his British passport in 1935 instead of obtaining one from the Irish Free State, and chose to keep it in 1940 when accepting an Irish passport could have helped him to leave Vichy France more easily. His refusal to change his passport was partly due to the advantages a British passport gave him internationally, his being out of sympathy with the violence of Irish politics, and his dismay over the Irish Free State's political alignment with the Catholic Church.

Religious views

Joyce had a complex relationship with religion. Firsthand statements by him and Stanislaus attest that he did not consider himself a Catholic, though his work is deeply influenced by Catholicism. In particular, his intellectual foundations were grounded in his early Jesuitical education. Even after he left Ireland, he sometimes went to church. When living in Trieste, he woke up early to attend Catholic Mass on Holy Thursday and Good Friday and occasionally attended Eastern Orthodox services, saying he liked the ceremonies better.

Joyce lapsed from the Church early in life, and Nora refused to allow a Catholic service when he died. His works frequently critique, ridicule, and blaspheme Catholicism, and he appropriates Catholic rituals and concepts for his own artistic purposes. Some critics have therefore argued that Joyce firmly rejected Catholicism, but Catholic critics have argued that Joyce never fully abandoned his faith, wrestling with it in his writings and becoming increasingly reconciled to it. They regard ''Ulysses'' and ''Finnegans Wake'' as expressions of a Catholic sensibility, insisting that the critical views of religion the characters in his novels express are not those of the author.

Other critics have suggested that Joyce's apparent apostasy was less a denial of faith than a transmutation, a criticism of the Church's adverse effect on spiritual life, politics, and personal development. His attitude toward Catholicism has been described as an enigma in which there are two Joyces: a modern one who resisted the power of Catholicism and another who maintained his allegiance to its traditions. He has been compared to the medieval (wandering bishops), who left their discipline but not their cultural heritage of thought.

Joyce's responses to questions about his faith were often ambiguous. For example, during an interview after the completion of ''Ulysses'', Joyce was asked, "When did you leave the Catholic Church?" He answered, "That's for the Church to say."

Major works

''Dubliners''

''Dubliners'', first published in 1914, is a collection of 15 short stories that form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around the city in the early 20th century. The tales were written when Irish nationalism and the search for national identity was at its peak. Joyce holds up a mirror to that identity as a first step in the spiritual liberation of Ireland. The stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in ''Dubliners'' later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel ''Ulysses''. The initial stories are narrated by child protagonists. Later stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This aligns with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, and maturity.

''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''

''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', published in 1916, is a shortened rewrite of the novel ''Stephen Hero'', which was abandoned in 1905. It is a ''Künstlerroman'', a kind of coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. It functions both as an autobiographical fiction of the author and a biography of the fictional protagonist. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident in this novel.

''Exiles'' and poetry

Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, '' Exiles'', begun shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband-and-wife relationship, the play looks back to "The Dead" (the final story in ''Dubliners'') and forward to ''Ulysses'', which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.

He published three books of poetry. The first full-length collection was ''Chamber Music'' (1907), which consisted of 36 short lyrics. It led to his inclusion in the '' Imagist Anthology'', edited by Ezra Pound, a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes "Gas from a Burner" (1912), '' Pomes Penyeach'' (1927), and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). These were published by the Black Sun Press in ''Collected Poems'' (1936).

''Ulysses''

The action of ''Ulysses'' starts on 16 June 1904 at 8am and ends sometime after 2am the next morning. Much of it occurs inside the minds of the characters, who are portrayed through techniques such as interior monologue, dialogue, and soliloquy. The novel has 18 episodes, each covering roughly one hour of the day in a unique literary style. Each chapter refers to an episode in Homer's ''Odyssey'', as well as a specific colour, a particular art or science, and a bodily organ. ''Ulysses'' sets the characters and incidents of the ''Odyssey'' in 1904 Dublin, representing Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope, and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus. It uses humour, including parody, satire and comedy, to contrast the novel's characters with their Homeric models. Joyce played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles so the work could be read independently of its Homeric structure.

''Ulysses'' can be read as a study of Dublin in 1904, exploring various aspects of the city's life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Joyce claimed that if Dublin was destroyed in some catastrophe, it could be rebuilt using his work as a model. To achieve this sense of detail, he relied on his memory, what he heard other people remember, and his readings, to create a sense of fastidious detail. Joyce regularly used the 1904 edition of '' Thom's Directory''—a work that listed the owners and tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city—to ensure his descriptions were accurate. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing, reliance on a formal schema to structure the narrative, and exquisite attention to detail represents one of the book's major contributions to the development of 20th-century modernist literature.

''Finnegans Wake''

''Finnegans Wake'' is an experimental novel that pushes stream of consciousness and literary allusion to their extremes. It can be read from beginning to end, but Joyce's writing transforms traditional ideas of plot and character development through his wordplay, allowing the book to be read non-linearly. Much of the wordplay stems from peculiar and obscure English, based mainly on complex multilevel puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than, Lewis Carroll's in ''Jabberwocky'' and draws on a wide range of languages. The associative nature of its language has led to its being interpreted as the story of a dream.

The metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola, whom Joyce read in his youth, plays an important role in ''Finnegans Wake'', as it provides the framework for how the characters' identities interplay and are transformed. Giambattista Vico's cyclical view of history—in which civilisation rises from chaos, passes through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapses back into chaos—structures the text's narrative, as evidenced by the book's opening and closing words: ''Finnegans Wake'' opens, "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs", and ends, "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". Thus the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of that sentence, turning the narrative into one great cycle.

Legacy

Joyce's work still has a profound influence on contemporary culture. ''Ulysses'' is a model for fiction writers, particularly its explorations into the power of language. Its emphasis on the details of everyday life has opened up new possibilities of expression for authors, painters and film-makers. It retains its prestige among readers, often ranking high on 'Great Book' lists. Joyce's innovations extend beyond English literature: his writing has been an inspiration for Latin American writers, and ''Finnegans Wake'' has become one of the key texts for French post-structuralism.

The open-ended form of Joyce's novels keeps them open to constant reinterpretation. They inspire an increasingly global community of literary critics. Joyce's studies—based on a relatively small canon of three novels, a small short story collection, one play, and two small books of poems—have generated over 15,000 articles, monographs, theses, translations, and editions.

In popular culture, the work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, known as Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.

Collections, museums, and study centres

The National Library of Ireland holds a large collection of Joycean material including manuscripts and notebooks, much of it available online. A joint venture between the library and University College Dublin, the Museum of Literature Ireland, the majority of whose exhibits are about Joyce and his work, has both a small permanent Joyce-related collection, and borrows from its parent institutions; its displays include "Copy No. 1" of ''Ulysses''. Dedicated centres in Dublin include the James Joyce Centre in North Great George's Street, the James Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove at the Martello tower where Joyce briefly lived and where he set the opening scene in ''Ulysses'', and the Dublin Writers Museum.University College London holds the only major research collection of Joyce's work in the United Kingdom, including first editions of all of Joyce's major works, many other editions and translations, as well as critical and background literature. The University at Buffalo's James Joyce Collection has more than 10,000 pages of the author's working papers, notebooks, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence and other materials as well as Joyce's private library.

Bibliography

Novels

Stephen Dedalus

* '' Stephen Hero'' (written 1904–06, posthumous publication by Jonathan Cape, 1944 (revised 1956 and 1963); precursor to ''A Portrait'', completed but preserved in fragment)
* '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' ( B. W. Huebsch, 1916, corrected 1964)
* '' Ulysses'' ( Shakespeare and Company, 1922)

Finnegan

* '' Finn's Hotel'' (written 1923, posthumous publication by Ithys Press, 2013; alleged precursor to ''Finnegans'')
* ''Finnegans Wake'' ( Faber & Faber, 1939, restored by Penguin Classics, 2012)

Short stories

* ''Dubliners'' ( Grant Richards Ltd., 1914)
* ''The Cat and the Devil'' (written 1936, posthumous publication by Faber & Faber, 1965)
* '' The Cats of Copenhagen'' (written 1936, posthumous publication by Ithys Press, 2012)

Poetry

* ''Chamber Music'' ( Elkin Mathews, 1907)
* '' Giacomo Joyce'' (written 1907, posthumous publication by Faber & Faber, 1968)
* '' Pomes Penyeach'' (Shakespeare and Company, 1927)
* ''Collected Poems'' ( Black Sun Press, 1936; includes ''Chamber Music'', ''Pomes Penyeach'' and other previously published works)

Play

* '' Exiles'' (Grant Richards Ltd., 1918)

Posthumous non-fiction

* ''The Critical Writings of James Joyce'' (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann, 1959)
* ''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1'' (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)
* ''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2'' (Ed. Richard Ellmann, 1966)
* ''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3'' (Ed. Richard Ellmann, 1966)
* ''Selected Letters of James Joyce'' (Ed. Richard Ellmann, 1975)
* ''Collected Epiphanies of James Joyce: A Critical Edition'' (Eds. Angus McFadzean, Morris Beja, Sangam Macduff, 2024)

Notes

References

Sources

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:Primary sources

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External links

Joyce Papers, National Library of Ireland

The Joyce Papers 2002, c. 1903–1928

The James Joyce – Paul Léon Papers, 1930–1940

Hans E. Jahnke Bequest at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation online at the National Library Of Ireland, 2014

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Resources

James Joyce Collection
at University College London
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The James Joyce Scholars' Collection
from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center

James Joyce from Dublin to Ithaca Exhibition
from the collections of Cornell University

Bibliography of Joycean Scholarship, Articles and Literary Criticism
from james-joyce.de

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