James Joyce

(1882 - 1941)
James Joyce remains in the consciousness of the later generation as the archetype of the rebellious
spirit and artist. He belonged to a period of trouble in the history of Ireland; he sensed the atmosphere
of disintegration and took his refuge in art as a form of protest. Born in Dublin to a lower middle
class family, he was destined to become a priest in the Roman Catholic Church but he rejected the idea
and got a B.A. at Dublin University. He left Ireland for France, but he was called back by his mothers
illness and for a while supported himself by teaching. Familiar with several modern languages, during
the Second World War he taught in Sweden and afterwards returned to Paris where he settled down to
literary life struggling continually against ill health and public recognition of his work.
Joyce reputation rests upon his prose writing his first success The Dubliners (1914) was followed
by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and much later Finnegans Wake
(1939). Joyces esthetic conception is not formulated in special essays, it appeared in the first draft of A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which was originally entitled Stephen Heroes in this draft Joyce
developed his concept and put some elements of it in the final version. Essential for his concept is the
theory of the epiphanies defined by Joyce as a sudden spiritual manifestation whether in the vulgarity
of speech or gesture or in a memorable face of the mind itself. He believed that he was for the man of
letters to record this epiphanies being moments of spiritual exaltation corresponding to the
apprehension of beauty. Joyce was influenced by the concepts of Thomas Aguinas, who considered that
for the apprehension of beauty three things are needed: Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas, which are in
Joyces version wholeness harmony and radiance. The initial state wholeness implies apprehension in
space and time an isolation of the object from its surrounding environment. Harmony - the
apprehension of the parts of the objects or image and of the inherent relationship among the parts, the
moments when the internal structure is realized. Radiance - the apprehension of the esthetic image in
its essence in the individual mind of the features of beauty and of the individuality of the object as
such. When the object is apprehended as a unique object, the individual attains supreme exaltation. The
instant when that supreme quality of beauty is apprehended by the mind is the spiritual state the
enchantment of the heart. Only the artist can fully respond to beauty it is his mission to apprehend
beauty and help others perceive it the same way, to guide the common person through these three
stages, to attain artistic pleasure in the end. The final meaning represents more the sum of the
constituent parts, more than the apparent manifestation of the object. The literary epiphanies then must
be understood as complex images, revealing essential features of the world of character and experience
apprehension intuitively in the form of brief sketches deliberately objective and fragmentary in form.
They are moments of life often trivial in appearance, little errors and gestures near straws in the
mind by which people betrayed the very things they were most careful to conceal. Joyce often
recorded in his notebooks such moments in his own life fragments of dialog and personal experience.
Such epiphanies later included in his novels represent Joyces effort to transpose autobiography into the
universality of art. Joyce began to master this mater in Dubliners conceit at about the same period with
Stephen Hero the extreme fidelity to details of life made early critics mistake Dubliners for a
naturalistic chronicle and complain about certain passages of obscene language or of transparent
Page 1 of 5

political and cultural references. Joyce definitely refused any alteration in his book for he viewed it not
as a collection of 15 independent stories but as the work with a unitary structure and a complex method
and style prefiguring his latter novels. Dublin a European capital that has preserved its natural and
individual identity could well sustain Joyces theme of the modern metropolis as a typical social macrocosmos at the same time it could reinforce Joyces moral and political theme that of an Irish community
paralyzed by the Catholic Church and the British Estate. This center of paralysis Joyce tried to present
to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: Childhood, Adolescence, Maturity and Public Life.
The theme of Irish paralysis central in all the stories is Joyces variant of the waste land motive. This
takes social forms like in the stories of public life (Ivy Day in the Committee Room) or dramatic
individual forms some characters are allowed to dream of the exotic East ( The sisters, Araby) or of the
distant Buenos Aires (Eveline) as substitute places of personal fulfillment against the drabbed
provincial background of Dublin. But only Gavriel Conroy of The Dead materializes his dream of
escape into a journey to Europe. The theme of frustrated escape is closely related to these of frustrated
love and the search for a symbolic father. Many of these stories features artist or would be artist as
protagonist sat in opposition with the arrogant men of action. All these themes are brought to a climax
in the The Dead, Gavriel Conroy is another self-reflection of Joyce but also a symbolic figure, a man
with artistic taste and intellectual refinement who feels alienated in his own background.
Stephen Hero is inferior to other joycean works, its 234 pages were later concentrated in about 93
pages most of chapter 5 of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man the mastered form here is still
uncertain though Joyce may had used the epiphanies, they were not yet exploited to their full
significance, the form of this unfinished novel is traditional: that of a narrative of environment and
motivation or of a diary novel rich in disclosed autobiographical material, the family and social
background are detailed, the character real and untransformed. Stephen Hero contains important
material for the later books.
A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is a well-structured and balanced novel that can be read in
itself but also as a kind of prelude to the next two novels. It combines the lyricism of earlier works with
the naturalism and dramatic form of the later. This novel leaves the career artist unfinished and
questionable. In form A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man follows the tradition of the bildungsroman
being a study of adolescence and growth, a novel of development. But at the same time the tradition of
the knstlerroman since the stress is laid on the development of the artist in a relation to society and
his vocation. Joyces portrait is to a great extent a self portrayal for many years Joyce had been
identified by critics with Stephen his perfect alter ego, recent critics prefer to consider Stephen an
ironic figure even a joker or a clown (the meaning of the word artist in the Irish slang of the period).
It draws attention upon the indefinite article in the title ( A portrait that is a possible variant among
others) and the limiting phrase as a young man revealing Joyces retrospective glance as a mature
artist upon his earlier autobiographical mask like many other modern characters. Stephen both attracts
and repeals he is oversensitive physically weak insecure in his relations contemptuous of authority
discipline and convention an anarchic rebel. He is also a constant dreamer in a dramatic conflict with
reality he is a perfectionist hungering for absolutes indulging in various dreams of escape; through
love, religion of art or through open rebellion against the social and spiritual nets that bind him.
But since Daedalus is actually his fathers name Stephen may be regarded as Icarus Daedalus son who
finally falls as he soared out of the confinement of the labyrinth he is symbolically the fallen angel or
Page 2 of 5

the fallen artist held back by a constraining and felestin society (see his first name suggestion of a
heroic career but also of martyrdom) superficially the novel is organized around a few successive
moments of initial time of crises like a bildungsroman but the chronology is often disregarded with
important evidence unclear: the age of Stephen at the beginning, the events of the period between his
resignation from Cloneglobes and his middle term at Bellvedere the location of his adolescent loves.
The very end of the book is anticlimactic featuring random entries from Stephens diary often without
enough depths of feeling and idea. So this is not an ordinary bildungsroman it is rather an
impressionistic portrait of the development of a consciousness as it gradually discovers the world at the
same time it is the testimony of a linguistic development: from the earlier simple sentence structures
abounding in sense imperious and childish adjectives to the complex tortuous sentence structures of
mature Stephen, the stream of consciousness as developed by Joyce has as a defining feature the
exploitation of the elements of incoherence in our conscience process but underneath the imperfectly
integrated bundle of memories sensations and impulses following the lockian principle of free
association one may discover a rich structure of unifying motives and symbols. There is for example
an evident bird symbolism that underlines the theme of fight and references to bird imagery in erotic
descriptions. Birds as omens are also intensely used. Stephens rebellion is done but his search for selfrealization has barely began.
Ulysses (1914 1922) picks up the rest of the story but places it in an ampler social and political
background. Stephen is no longer the central personage continuing the progress towards a dramatic
impersonal form Ulysses deals with the round of daily activities of three main characters and a 100
minor figures underlining the diversity of life in Dublin. Only Stephen continues to be partly
autobiographical (Leopold and Marion Bloom are great imaginary creations of Joyce). The three
protagonists react differently in relation to their disintegrating world: Stephen is an introvert
donquixotic artist a negator though tormented by remorse. Leopold Bloom advertising agent at 38 is a
humane average individual matter of fact in his business ventures, but also imaged as he tries to
compensate for his unsuccessful domestic and social existence in elaborate reveries, he is sensual,
attached to its comforts but rather insecure (as a Jew in a catholic community). Molly Bloom ex-singer
and a tart is as complex and vivid a character as Chaucers Wife of Bath. Taken together in their
archetypal generality these characters spend an entire humanity, each of them represent many roles and
also basic principles of life (male, female, progeny, and artist/ creator). Leopold Bloom is conceived as
a man in the round like few other characters in England literature; he is father, husband, lover, citizen
outcast, hero and antihero. The archetypal roles of these personages are further emphasized to a
complex frame of mythical and literary references: Stephen is identified with Telemachus, Hamlet,
Christ, Icarus, Daedalus, and Faust; Leopold Bloom with the ghost of Hamlets father, Odysseus, the
wandering Jew, Christ; Molly with Penelope, the Earth around which Stephen and Leopold revolve like
comets, the river Lyffey or island, the same symbolic intention underlines the temporary concentration
of the story to a single day in Dublin June 16th 1904, thus the unity of time and space has both a
structural and a symbolic/ thematic importance. Joyce applied a high power microscope to the few
events of 18 hours expending the moments to the significance of a universal narrative a grand epic of
humanity. Ulysses is first of all an immense impressionistic panorama of a place, the Joyces
countries and its people it contains an intimate naturalistic reconstruction of Dublin at the beginning
of the century, a dreary spectacle of Irish life with almost nothing admirable in it. The magnifying glass
Page 3 of 5

technique, a kind of naturalism carried to the extreme is also meant to emphasize ironically the trivial
of Irish life in opposition with the mythical Homeric framework. The extensive views of the stream of
consciousness further increase the confusion and the incoherence and the comprehension.
Contemporary critics and readers may still be puzzled by the complexity, formlessness and
obscurity of Joyces epic, some do not even recognize it as a novel to others it represents the modern
epic, a myth, a fiction, an encyclopedia and Ulysses it is true, has little in common with the
traditional novel: its plot is superficial and almost indiscernible, the theme complex and hidden, the
characters often mere archetypal or voices, the structure discontinuous and labyrinthic. This rigorous
sense of form and extremely complex structure the reader can discover only by a deep perusal of the
narrative. Luckily Joyce himself provided us with a plan of the book illuminating its complexity. Thus
the immediate horizontal narrative structure of the novel involves a sequence of episodes modeled after
Homers Odyssey each with an appointed hour of the day and place of the city or with further symbolic
reference to an organized artistic color, image and technique adapted to the episodes. The elaborated
symmetries inside this schema are readily noticeable the hours make up a hole day the changing scenes
take us through the main places of interest of a modern city the organs form a complete human body
the succession of arts a synopsis of human activities the technique an almost complete repertoire of
novelistic strategies old and new, further more almost everything in Ulysses goes in threes. The epic is
divided in 3 parts; with part one Thelemachia, composed of 3 episodes; part 2 Odyssey of 12 episodes
and part 3 Nostos of 3 episodes again. Besides these quasi-geometrical symmetries suggesting the
architecture of a gothic cathedral, there are larger allegorical and symbolist intentions. The narrative of
the modern city can also be read as an allegorical of the human body or the cosmic world with the rage
of colors evoking the four universal elements: green earth, blue, gray air, white water, red fire,
but few have noticed from the beginning that Ulysses is basically a human comedy with the mythical
references meant both to elevate contemporary realities and to set them in an ironic conflict with the
heroic past. Ulysses may be read also as a parody of the Odyssey just as it is a parody of history and
literature of the popular styles and sentimental produces of the times. Ulysses belongs to the trend of
post impressionism and expressionism revoking the abundance of physical data and impressions into a
complicated abstract pattern of symbolic and mythic references, dramatic and comic at the same time.
Joyces Universalist intention was carried to its ultimate constitution in Finnegans Wake (1939).
For this is a vast symbolical dream of an Irish man expended continuously to comprise everything in
history, literature, mythology or contemporary life. Joyces purpose was to construct a mythological
narrative in which any detailed of human behavior past or present could be related to the cycles of
history, at its basis is an archetypal family Humphry Chimpden Earwicker who keeps a tavern in a
Dublin suburb; his younger wife Anna Livia and three children Issy and the twins Sham and Shawn,
their doings on a typical day and night in Dublin are negligible more important is their representative
value, thus Humphry Chimpden Earwicker becomes a sort of every man with multiple histories and
fictional identities: Adam, Caesar, Oscar Wilde, Humpty Dumpty at times his only a sigla H.C.E.
interpretable as Have Children Everywhere( the universal father and procreator) or Here Comes
Everybody or House Castel and Environments (the hero becoming identified with the masculine
features of the geographical environment). Likewise his wife represents many women or the river
Lyffey that runs through Dublin and about 600 other rivers mentioned in a chapter, the life principle
and time. Finally the three children have similar complex roles Issy represents the tempting side of
Page 4 of 5

femininity, the twins restate a symbolic conflict in Joyces work between the pen man Sham strongly
attached to his mother and the felestine self-assertive man of business Shawn. The title was inspired by
a Irish story: Tom Finnegan a hod-carrier who being drunk falls of a ladder and apparently dies only to
revive during the wake as one of his maids accidentally sprinkles him with whisky therefore the theme
of death of resurrection and the cycles of change being repeated in the course of history for the
structure of the narrative. This idea Joyce borrowed from Vico who in La Scientia Nuova spoke of four
phases of development: the divine, with people governed by the awe from the supernatural, the
aristocratic phase of the epics, the democratic and individualistic and the final stage of chaos. Joyce,
like Yeats and Eliot, believed that the world had entered this final stage of crisis, to be followed by the
creation of a new world. He stressed the theme of the fall from innocence through some mysterious
guilt the fall of man from paradise the clash of Wall Street in 1929, the collapse of the entire western
civilization. The word wake underlines the various meanings of the book, it may mean the wake of a
ship, figuratively the traces left by man in history, it may mean a watch over the dead also there
resurrection of the dead all the main characters are viewed as cosmic, grotesque, pathetic, passionate,
trivial, their repeated reincarnations indicate their universality and lasting qualities. Joyces
experiments with language makes the novel practically unreadable it seems that Joyce almost blind at
the time relied more on the sounds of words so that this novel becomes more intelligible if read aloud it
is a language adventure with the action taking place in the circulation through the labyrinthine mash of
words from the ecstasy of sleep to the wakefulness of speech.
All Joyces prose works can be regarded as one Book thus Stephen Hero tentatively and A Portrait
of an Artist as a Young Man skillfully present youths quest of integrity, in Dubliners the writer explores
the heroes environment, the historical sordid Dublin, he at once loved and despised. In Ulysses he
brings this together in a new relation Stephen and Leopold complement each other in the father and son
relationship of the spirit, Finnegans Wake is the dream of life, in which its characters of multiple
identities appearing now as one person, now another, yet always themselves, and its subtle idiom in
which a word or phrase may have a similar multiplicity of meaning. Finnegans Wake is the expression
of the many in one and it completes the synthesis of Joyces epic of man from the unfolding of the
individual, to the comic history of the race. In the quest of 20 century novelists for new techniques by
which to present the contemporary human dilemma, Joyce is a pioneer, he was a ceaseless
experimentalist never anxious to explore the potentiality of a method once it was evolving and in his
use of the stream of consciousness technique he went further and deeper than any other.

Page 5 of 5