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 spent time as a bank clerk, while trying to find time to write. He started to have eye problems in 1907, and by the end of his life he was almost blind. After Ulysses in 1922, he was left a lot of money from an Englishwoman, and then spent his time working on his writing full time. This book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, was an autobiographical novel about his youth and his home life. The main character’s name in this is Stephen Dedalus.
It shows a clear cut , advocary of an artists right to defy inhibiting forces like, family, church and nation. When Stephen, was in the university he talks about hi dislike for his classmates who just bend their heads and write in their notebooks, “the points they were bidden to note, nominal definitions, essential definitions and examples or dates of birth or death, chief works, a favorable and unfavorable criticism side by side,” Joyce’s views of Irish education weren’t very good. Stephen in this book scorns his family, and his fathers attributes.
He thinks that he has failed in his effort to unite his will and the will of God, to love God the way he feels is expected. He feels this because he will not serve God. He wants to live his life his way. He talks about how he knew he couldn’t be accepted, “it wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world’s culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived than the subtle and curious jargons of heraldry and falconry. “
