James Joyce: Does nobody understand?

born in Dublinborn in Dublin educated by the Jesuitseducated by the Jesuits left Ireland for medical school in Paris at 21left Ireland for medical school in Paris at 21 returned to the continent in 1904 with Nora Barnaclereturned to the continent in 1904 with Nora Barnacle spent most of his life on the continent (Paris, Italy, Switzerland) in dire povertyspent most of his life on the continent (Paris, Italy, Switzerland) in dire poverty Personal Background

Joyces innovative literary techniques make him one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, though its reputation is mostly based on four books

Realism Disciplined prose Different points of view Dubliners The Sisters An Encounter Araby After the Race The Boarding House Eveline Two Gallants A Little Cloud Clay Counterparts A Painful Case Ivy Day in the Committee Room A Mother Grace Mature lifePublic lifeAdolescenceChildhood DUBLIN Paralysis / Escape The stories present human situations They are arranged into 4 groups:

In composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country… I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass. My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

A largely autobiographical work, recounting the first twenty years of life of a young artist, Stephen Dedalus (a very symbolic name). The novel describes his intellectual development, his search for an identity as a writer and his realization that before he can be a writer he must free himself from the suffocating affects of Irish religion, provincialism and narrow-mindedness. In this work, Joyce uses a stream of consciousness technique, a literary device, called interior monologue. Third-person narration Minimal dialogue Language and prose used to portray the protagonists state of mind A portrait of the artist as a young man

Ulysses took seven years of unbroken labour, twenty thousand hours of work, havoc to brain and body, nerves, agitation, fainting fits, numerous eye complaints – glaucoma, iritis, cataract, crystallized cataract, nebula in the pupil, conjunctivitis, torn retina, blood accumulation, abscesses and one tenth-normal vision Word, play, puns, and gross jokes are mixed with highly intellectual verbal exchanges. The triviality of everyday life is sometimes described in minute detail, while elsewhere there are intensely poetic passages and a variety of styles that range from the literary to the journalistic. E. OBrien James Joyce

O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes 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 Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

FINNEGANS WAKE - His last and most complex work - A linguistic experimentation pushed to the limits of comprehensibility. -The plot: Humphrey Earwicker goes to bed, falls asleep, has a dream, is awakened by the cries of one of his children and falls back asleep. -The language includes idioms, curses, nursery rhymes, literary quotations and new words made by combining parts of words from various languages If Ulysses was a book about daytime Finnegans Wake was a book of the night. Dream and riddle, myth-making, syllepses, syllogism, naturalism, supernaturalism, fabulism, kings and giants along with Sir Tristam, violer damores […] Finnegans wake is a journey into the unconscious attempting to be conscious. Oliver Cogarty

Dublin today can seem like a city-size monument to Ulysses: there are tiles in the sidewalk quoting sections of the book; Davy Byrne's is filled with tourists who only know the pub because of Joyce; there's a life-size statue of Joyce himself off O'Connell Street; and June 16th, the day the book takes place, is now a holiday called "Bloomsday." But here's the thing. Joyce's book was banned in Ireland for years. In fact, Ireland was the last – the last! – country to lift the ban on the novel. Legacy E. OBrien