James Joyce ( )

Born in Dublin into a middle-class Catholic family. His father had been a supporter of Charles Parnell. He attended University College, Dublin. In 1902, he went on a self-imposed exile  Paris, Pula, Trieste. At the outbreak of World War I, he left for Zurich. In 1920, he moved to Paris. His Life

Dubliners (1914) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Ulysses (1922) Finnegans Wake (1939) His Works

A complex relationship he rejected everything his works are centred that was Irish on Ireland, Dublin Early 20 th - century Dublin occupies every page written by Joyce Joyce and Ireland

His self-imposed style had given him the objectivity he needed to write about Ireland with the necessary emotional and intellectual detachment. Joyce’s novels show a similar shift from: the particular to the universal; the lyrical style to the epic style. Joyce’s Narrative

A collection of 15 short stories  the failure of self-realisation of an inhabitant of Dublin. The first 14 were written by 1905, the last and longest story was finished by Joyce’s 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’ This sense of paralysis is presented in four stages: childhood, adolescence, maturity, public life. Dubliners

Realistic  the degree of perfectly recreating characters, places, streets, pubs and idioms of Dublin. Joyce makes use of a symbolic effect:  it gives the common object an unforeseen depth and becomes the key to a new view of reality. He coined the definition of epiphany:  ‘manifestation, showing’  a moment when a simple object/fact/situation suddenly flashes out with meaning and makes a person realise his/her condition. Realism and Symbolism

The climax to all the other stories …and their counterpoint, too  detached objectivity gives place to lyrical intensity. Gabriel is the central character of the story: the best representative of all failed Dubliners; he is what Joyce would have become if he had stayed in Ireland. The Dead

It begins with the Christmas party that the Morkan sisters organise each year. The guests, both Catholic and Protestant, debate crucial arguments  Irish politics in relation to Britain. Gabriel Conroy, the Morkan sisters’ nephew, is a journalist who has an unfulfilled personality  he prefers not to expose himself and to continue his usual life. Late at night, Gabriel and Gretta, his wife, go back to their hotel. The Story

Gabriel and Gretta are in their room. Gretta has just kissed him: a song heard at the party brings forth forgotten memories: they bring about hidden depths of feeling and a new awareness of her relationship with Gabriel. For Gabriel, it comes when he thinks he has full possession of his wife. I Think He Died for Me

Gretta throws herself crying on to the bed. She reveals she is crying for a boy she used to know long ago. This revelation is not sudden, but gradual. It brings about a series of further emotional shocks for Gabriel: that the boy, Michael Furey, died for love of Gretta. The End

Gabriel has just listened to Gretta’s story. He reflects on how poor a part he has played in his wife’s life and feels his own pettiness. In the end, he feels elevated to the world of spirit, the region of the dead, symbolically mapped by the snow falling all over Ireland. The Living and the Dead