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James Joyce

Born

in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland

February 02, 1882

Died

January 13, 1941

Website

http://www.jamesjoyce.ie/

Genre

Fiction, Poetry

Influences

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James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consist James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum ...more

Combine Editions
James Joyce’s books

Average rating: 3.75 · 564,542 ratings · 39,388 reviews · 1,726 distinct works • Similar authors

	Dubliners 3.83 avg rating — 177,308 ratings — published 1914 — 81 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 3.64 avg rating — 164,581 ratings — published 1916 — 3618 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ulysses 3.76 avg rating — 138,285 ratings — published 1922 — 3054 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Dead 3.97 avg rating — 24,845 ratings — published 1914 — 126 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Finnegans Wake 3.68 avg rating — 13,658 ratings — published 1939	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Araby 3.63 avg rating — 7,901 ratings — published 1914 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Dubliners by James Joyce, Kevin J.H. Dettmar (Introduction) 3.93 avg rating — 7,036 ratings — published 1914 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Eveline 3.61 avg rating — 2,810 ratings — published 1904 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Exiles 3.50 avg rating — 2,288 ratings — published 1914 — 311 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chamber Music 3.45 avg rating — 1,578 ratings — published 1905 — 171 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by James Joyce…

Series by James Joyce

James Joyce: Letters (3 books)
by

James Joyce,

Richard Ellmann (Editor)

4.41 avg rating — 74 ratings

يوليسيس (4 books)
by

James Joyce,

جيمس جويس,

صلاح نيازي (مترجم)

3.66 avg rating — 89 ratings

Finnegans Wake (6 books)
by

James Joyce,

Fabio Pedone (Foreword, Editor, Translator),

Enrico Terrinoni (Afterword, Editor, Translator),

Stefano Bartezzaghi (Foreword)

4.16 avg rating — 25 ratings

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Polls

June 2022 New School Poll

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, 1916, 329 pages

66 votes, 23.2%

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, 1982, 183 pages

53 votes, 18.7%

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, 1993, 329 pages

43 votes, 15.1%

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, 1968, 238 pages

42 votes, 14.8%

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, 1902, 210 pages

32 votes, 11.3%

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, 1977, 128 pages

28 votes, 9.9%

Independent People by Halldór Laxness, 1934, 482 pages

20 votes, 7.0%

284 total votes

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James Joyce’s Followers (9,542)

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