JAMES JOYCE: VITA E OPERE
James Joyce:
life and works. James Augusta Aloysius
Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus
Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar.
When he was child, his family lost most of their prestige and wealth.
His father was a supporter of the movement for independent Ireland, but when the leader of this movement died, Joyce’s father retired from politics and social life. This event was for Joyce the sign of the failure of his country unable to get free from the domination of Britain. At first, Joyce wanted to become a priest, so he attend two Jesuits schools, then he went to study modern languages at University College Dublin where he changed his mind and decided to become a writer. However, his first work were refused publication by the university authorities so Joyce, deluded and frustrated for personal reasons and for the social, political situation of his country, left Ireland to live abroad for all his life. First he went to Paris, then to Pola and Trieste. He was accompanied by the woman of his life that he married later after having two children. In Trieste, he finished “Dubliners”, a collection of 15 short stories about the life of people in Dublin. At the outbreak of the war I, Joyce left Trieste for Zurich, where he started working on his masterpiece “
Ulysses”. He had a poor health and had an eye operation against blindness. He died in Zurich in 1941.
JAMES JOYCE DUBLINERS
“DUBLINERS” - Joyce loved and hated his country at the same time, he seems to reject everything that was Irish, but at the same time all his works are mainly about Ireland and Dublin in particular. In “Dubliners”, Joyce gives a realistic picture of every day life in Dublin, but at the same time he writes about the moral history of his country. The city seems paralyzed by the atmosphere of hypocrisy and spiritual inactivity. It’s the paralysis of will, courage: men and women seem to accept the limitation of the social, political context and have no reactions of any kind. The stories are symbolically linked one another so that the present the four aspects of man’s life: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. “Dubliners” then on one level appears realistic because it recreates characters, places, streets, pubs and idioms of Dublin, on the other hand makes use of symbolic effects which gives common objects and ordinary situations deep meaning. Joyce himself coined the definition of “epiphany” to indicate these moments of reflections on man’s life through simple things and actions. Epiphany, manifestation, just as in the showing of the Christ child to the magi kings.
JAMES JOYCE ULISSE
“
ULYSSES” - His masterpiece was published in Paris in 1922. The story takes place in Dublin in the course of a single day and tries to describe in details the actions but above all the chaotic flow of thoughts, feelings emotions of three characters: Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly and his friend Stephen Deadalus. The main theme of the book is that of the Journey,
Ulysses’s story is used to represent allegorically man’s journey through life. But while Homer’s
Ulysses is a hero and his journey is full of adventures and heroic brave deeds, and he is in search of truth and knowledge, Bloom’s journey is banal and common and all the characters lack of passion and ideals
