James Joyce was an Irish writer and poet.
One of the most significant writers of 20th century. Born into a well-off Catholic family in
Dublin, the family suffered a set-back in their fortunes, and slid into poverty. He left the city in 1904 to spend the rest of his life on the
Continent.
His Irish experiences are essential to his writings which are exclusively on
Irish subjects. The early volume of short stories, Dubliners, is a
penetrating analysis of the stagnation of Dublin society. A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, largely autobiographical, shows the process of
attaining maturity and self-consciousness by a young gifted mani.
The main character is Stephen Dedalus. In this novel some glimpses of Joyce's later technique can be noticed, in the use of interior monologue and in the concern with the psychic rather than external reality.
In Ulysses, definitely Joyce's masterpiece, he uses the stream of
consciousness technique to present his characters. The novel sets the
ancient myth of Ulysses, Penelope and Telemachus in modern Dublin and
impersonates them in the characters of Mr. Bloom, his wife Molly and Stephen
Dedalus, parodistically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores
various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Joyce
employs a variety of literary styles to suit his purpose. His method of stream
of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to
the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and
character construction, and is written in a peculiar obscure language.
His works are :
See also :
literature, [English literature]?
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