James Joyce

James Joyce

James Joyce, an Irish novelist and poet, grew up near Dublin. James

Joyce is one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. In each of

his prose works he used symbols to experience what he called an "epiphany",

the revelation of certain revealing qualities about himself. His early writings

reveal individual moods and characters and the plight of Ireland and the Irish

artist in the 1900's. Later works, reveal a man in all his complexity as an

artist and in family aspects. Joyce is known for his style of writing called

"stream of consciousness". Using this technique, he ignored ordinary sentence

structure and attempted to reproduce the rambling's of the human mind. Many of

his works were influenced by his life in Ireland as an artist. He was

influenced by three main factors in his life, his childhood and parents, his

homeland of Dublin, Ireland, and the Roman Catholic Church. These three

aspects show up in all his works subtly, but specifically in, The Dead, A

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Araby.

James Joyce, was born February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. He was the

first of fifteen kids born to Mary Jane Murray, and John Stanslaus Joyce. He

was christened James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. His mother was a mild woman who

had intelligent opinions but didn't express them. His father was a violent,

quick tempered man who was a medical student and politician. He was educated

in Dublin at Jesuit school's his whole life. In 1888, he went to Clongeswood

College, but his father lost his job and James had to withdraw. He graduated in

October of 1902, from Royal University. He was fascinated by the sounds of

words and by the rhythms of speech since he first started school. He was

trained by the Jesuits who at one time hoped he would join their order; but

Joyce became estranged from the Jesuits and defected from the Catholic Church

after graduating college. Joyce made a huge effort to free himself from all

aspects of the past such as, family, religion, and country. He left Ireland in

1902 after graduating college. He spent the rest of his life in either Trieste,

Zurich, or Paris. During this time he was very poor. He spent much of his

working career as a language instructor. He was said to have known 17

languages. He also s...

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...and that people should think on their

own, without the church telling you how to think.

James Joyce's was interested in discovering the truth in his writings

and revealing it. He was a good observer of reality, which he loved, and he

always wanted to get at the truth behind the appearance. Joyce voluntarily

exiled himself from Ireland, but still Ireland was never far from his mind, and

his writing. He also exiled himself from the church yet wrote about it and it's

constraints often. He left his childhood behind and chose to write his

childhood autobiography under a different name. He observed other people's

reality and yet choose to ignore his own. He left Ireland, the church, and his

childhood, psychically, but he never left them in his own unconscious. He

choose to write about his life and feelings in other peoples words and in other

peoples mouths. Still wishing to exile himself from his life, he almost felt as

if by leaving all these places on the outside he would leave all his feelings

behind also. He wrote about the topics he choose to distance himself from, as

if to get an unbiased look at them, and to write about the real truth.