James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, just south of Dublin in a wealthy suburb called Rathgar. The Joyce family was initially well off as Dublin merchants with bloodlines that connected them to old Irish nobility in the country. James' father, John Joyce, was a fierce Irish Catholic patriot and his political and religious influences are most evident in Joyce's two key works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.
As a result of their steadily...
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In the novel Ulysses, a hallmark of modernist writing, James Joyce presents to the reader a particular relationship between inner and outer worlds, blurring the distinction between the internal consciousness’s of his characters and the externality...
There is a long standing tradition within literature of art within the text holding symbolic meaning. Through either referring or depicting art the author is able to convey, and often consolidate, the ideas of the artist whom they are referring...
For all the stereotypes and characterizations that modernism and its literary masters bear, any kind of overwhelming optimism is seldom cited among the accusations. Often summarized as a movement conceived in the wake of the horrors of the first...
The great aim is accurate, precise and definite description. The first thing is to recognise how extraordinarily difficult this is.’ (T.E. Hulme).
In the works The Waves (1931) and Ulysses (first published in 1922), Woolf and Joyce both use the...
The “Eye,” “Aye,” and “I’s” have it.
Indeed, the ‘Cyclops’ episode is recognizable at a glance. Following The ‘Sirens’ melodic fugue, the twelfth chapter sees a swift change, both in tone and form. The narrative shifts to a mysteriously verbose...
The legend of Ulysses is one which has been told and retold many times. In fact the truth of Ulysses is largely unknown in that there are too many accounts to distinguish what is fact and what is fiction. Homer’s The Odyssey is perhaps the most...
The “Nausikaa” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses illuminates the complex dynamics of Dublin’s socioeconomic sex/gender system, in which women and men perform gender differently as the result of invisible yet pervasive social forces surrounding sex....
The characters of Ulysses are, to some extent, all shaped by the years of historical turmoil that preceded them. In early 20th century Dublin, they hold their various lineages and family histories to great importance, and others determine their...
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home has the polished surface appearance of a charming comic about a young girl’s coming of age and struggles with self-identity. Bechdel’s strong personal voice emanates from the text with a captivating candor that renders ...
Part I: Formalist Approach: James Joyce’s contemplative short story, “The Dead” examines the actions of a neurotic Irish intellectual, Gabriel Conroy, and his existential realizations following a revelation from his wife, Gretta. The story begins...
Alden Nowlan’s poetic account of young Kevin O’Brien’s coming of age in The Wanton Troopers is a beautiful yet tragic narration mirroring that of Nowlan’s own life. The book develops around the relationships and discoveries Kevin makes about...
When reading James Joyce’s, Dubliners, conformity and the role it plays in society are important themes. Throughout the text, the characters struggle to adhere to the “social norms” of their time. In numerous stories, the characters are tasked...
On the surface, James Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories and unrelated characters woven together only by the common element of the city of Dublin in the early 20th century. Upon closer examination, however, it is evident that each...
Though James Joyce's realist short story "The Dead" and T.S. Eliot's mock-epic poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" both describe a climate of self-conscious emotional inarticulacy and division, the protagonists of each work deny themselves...
Joyce's depiction of women is characterized by a high degree of literary self-consciousness, perhaps even more so than in the rest of his work. The self-consciousness emerges as an awareness of both genre and linguistic expectations. contrasting...
The characters whom inhabit Joyce's world in "Dubliners," often have, as Harvard Literature Professor Fischer stated in lecture, a "limited way" of thinking about and understanding themselves and the world around them. Such "determinism," however,...
It is Joyce's use of voyeurism that most characterizes the erotic in "The Dead," "The Boarding House," "Two Gallants," and "Araby." Eroticism is strongly driven by mystery and suspense. By creating a passive individual experiencing sexuality...
James Joyce's Dubliners is a fearlessly candid portrayal of his native city, providing his readers a glimpse of a "dear dirty Dublin", and to his countrymen "one good look at themselves". Joyce's collection of stories, virtually chronicling the...
In James Joyce's "Araby", an arcane glimpse into the life of a young boy is revealed as he passes from a state of naivete into cognizance of his life. We watch as he leads himself through a fateful-ending journey in which he realizes his...
In the Irish Catholic Society portrayed by James Joyce in Dubliners, the characters live in a world guided by "respectability", yet some are driven by the urge to escape. Joyce illustrates the reputable populace as false and undesirable, and...
James Joyce wrote two versions of his short story "The Sisters," the first one under the pen name of Stephen Daedalus. Both versions tell the story of a boy and a priest, Father Flynn. The latter dies, and the people around him react to the loss....
Even though money can't buy happiness, the lack of money is usually the cause of sadness. Poverty is, in fact, a widespread problem that can sometimes restrict and even imprison a person to the point that struggling seems pointless. In Dubliners...
In "The Sisters" James Joyce creates an elusive mystery surrounding the death of James Flynn by withholding narrator insight into the events of the story. He achieves this by selecting a young boy as the narrator, whose age is not specified but is...
James Joyce is lauded for his distinct style of writing in free direct discourse. Though his style may seem chaotic and disjointed, Joyce adds a single fixture to his narratives that conveys a unity and connects the otherwise haphazard dialogue....
