James Joyce
Biography
James Joyce is one of the most revered writers in the English language and a central figure
in the history of the novel, as one of the first or most relevant writers to portray exactly what
goes on in people’s heads each passing moment with what we now know as the stream of
consciousness.
James Joyce was born in 1882 and spent his youth in Dublin, a city he loved and hated at
the same time, which became central to his work. Every one of his books, stories and plays
is set in Dublin, which became the universal city in his works. Ireland was, at the time, a
British colony, and just like his father Joyce strongly supported the cause for independence.
Very important is the period he spent in Trieste with his wife, where he made friends with
Italo Svevo, who will source from Joyce’s techniques to write his famous “La coscienza di
Zeno”. The description of the city is rendered not from an external point of view, but through
the character’s floating minds.
Joyce’s novels begin in medias res (there’s no introduction, the reader is immediately
plunged in the story). → come in Der Tod in Venedig
1914 turned out to be Joyce's year of breakthrough, when a publisher in London finally
decided to publish his book of short stories Dubliners, which had been rejected 22 times
before. Four years later, in 1918, his book Ulysses was published, first in instalments and
then later as a novel in 1922, which made Joyce famous around the world.
Joyce died unexpectedly in Zurich in 1941.
Ulysses (1918)
The whole novel takes place in a single day (Thursday, June 16th 1904, a day special to
Joyce because it was the day he met his wife).
During the course of this one day, the three main characters wake up, have various
encounters in Dublin, and go to sleep. The book is designed as a detailed account of the
ordinary day of ordinary people in Dublin.
The city is so vital to the work, so inseparable from the human characters, that it becomes a
character itself.
The central character is Leopold Bloom, a common salesman, who represents Joyce’s
“everyman”. During his wanderings he meets the indigent writer Stephen Dedalus, the
protagonist of A portrait of an artist as a young man, who is considered Joyce’s alter ego.
Stephen momentarily becomes Bloom’s adopted son: the alienated common man rescues
(salva) the alienated artist and takes him home (e lo porta a casa).
At home there is Molly, Bloom’s wife, a voluptuous singer who is planning an afternoon of
adultery with her music director.
Ulysses is regarded by critics as the prose masterpiece of Modernism, because it
encapsulates all the innovative elements of this new literary wave. It sums up all the
previous techniques that Joyce had experimented in his earlier works. The book’s greatest
importance lies in its deep portrayal of the characters and the use of the stream of
