James Joyce: A Study of His Work and Writing Advice

Quitting Catholicism

Irish author James Joyce was born on February 2nd of 1882. Four of his most remarkable works are his collection of short stories called Dubliners, and three novels: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his most notable novel named Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Joyce was raised in Catholicism and even attended a couple Jesuit institutions as a young boy, but eventually rejected the lifestyle and teachings of the Irish Catholic Church. The Catholic upbringing of James Joyce's life is an aspect that heavily influences some of his later works. Catholic readers of James Joyce’s works often asserted that his writings were blasphemous, especially for the time in which they were composed and published. Despite being raised in a household determined by his father’s poor finances and his eventual refusal of Catholic teachings, James Joyce excelled in his academics. He studied and graduated in 1902 at the University College Dublin and two years later met Nora Barnacle, his future wife.

Naturalism and Unity

DUBLINERS: James Joyce’s short-story collection, first published in the year 1914, was revolutionary in its depiction of the literary movement known as naturalism. Naturalism was distinguished within the late nineteenth century during the time in which authors were rejecting the movement of Romanticism. While there is a similarity between naturalism and literary realism, naturalistic authors were instead concerned with the fictional portrait of the scientific method and detachment. An overarching aspect within the works on Naturalism is of the universe’s indifference to the choices and individual lives of humans. The inescapable force that the universe imposes on all of humanity was detailed in the works of Literary Naturalism composed between 1865 and 1900; the movement largely derived from Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Although Naturalism was a movement that existed primarily in the world of fiction, there was a nonfictional aspect in various authors’ works. Naturalistic writers held the philosophical position that through the impersonal observational study of fictional lives, one might come to grasp the laws which govern all humanity.

Irish nationalism was at an all time high during the era when Joyce wrote Dubliners. This era was defined as a crossroads of history and culture due to Ireland’s desire to find identity and purpose within a multitude of warring influences. Even though there were such opposing views during this time, Joyce’s Dubliners seemingly steered in the opposite direction. In James Joyce’s conceptualization, an epiphany was not a significant experience. Through his portrayal of characters that recognize their decisions but are unable to see with clarity the full ramifications of them, Joyce creates examples of people who never reach the more common definition of an epiphany: a sudden and profound realization in spirit and mind. Rather, in Joyce’s writings, the lack of the character’s epiphany is an epiphany in itself; the character instead has an experience rather than a realization—demonstrative of the naturalistic quality of the universe’s indifference. Because the Dubiners characters are left in lackluster circumstances, critics argue between the symbolism and realism contained therein: Pointing respectively to both the objects that may convey an intensified meaning and the detailed existing geographical locations. However, others argue that the work defies any kind of characterization due to the lack of traditional epiphany.

James Joyce’s Dubliners, is a work of fifteen short stories set in the early 20th century. Each is a naturalistic portrayal of Ireland’s middle class circumstances around the city of Dublin. Although Joyce submitted the manuscript for Dubliners a total of eighteen times to fifteen publishers, it took eight and a half years of rejections and negotiations before Joyce managed to have it published, and even attempted to include a preface of the difficulties he had had in securing a publisher, but the publisher Grant Richards wisely discarded this portion. Since Joyce also stated that the setting and characters were based in reality, this is the reason for at least one of the rejections: the publishers wished to avoid the possibility of libel lawsuits. There are many distinct streets, businesses, and geographical locations explicitly named in James Joyce’s Dubliners. The published Dubliners is the singular work from the author to include quotation marks during dialogue sections. Although Joyce asked publisher Grant Richards to erase them, his wish was denied. This was a stylistic choice of Joyce’s that was not original to his initial composition of Dubliners. 

Aside from quotations, another stylistic decision that Joyce made was for his short story collection to be arranged chronologically. The author determined four main parts for the ages of his characters to fall into. The first three stories are of childhood, the following were stories of adolescence, mature adult life, and finally, as represented by the title of the ending novella, “The Dead”. Although the sections of Dubliners were created intentionally, each piece within the sections was not. This was not done out of carelessness on the author’s part, rather, James Joyce aimed to emphasize an overall sense of thematic completion with his astute attention to the warring elements of similarities and differences in both his characters and plots. The balance that the author achieves in this work is done through recognition of the contrasting and coinciding themes in the context of a chronology of life development. Author James Joyce purposefully decided the order of his stories with both his readers’ perceptions, and the unity of the collection in mind. 

Change of Luck

After the long period of rejection that Joyce had endured to finally realize the publishing of Dubliners, and even his attempt at finding other work, the author’s luck was beginning to change for the better. Dubliners was now published and around the same time Ezra Pound, the American poet, critic, and major literary figure in the early 1900’s, became Joyce’s fortuitous supporter. On the advice of writer W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound wrote to James Joyce and requested that Joyce’s poem be borrowed and printed in the journal Des Imagistes. Because Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats were such prominent literary figures at the time, their interest in James Joyce helped push him toward becoming a substantial literary figure himself. Pound supplied him with the promotions and publicity that Joyce needed for further publishing of his works. This relationship amplified Joyce’s volume of writing, beginning with Ezra Pound convincing the editor of The Egoist to serially publish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN: James Joyce’s first novel named A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was semi-autobiographical and published in 1916. The novel began as a publishing of serial work in The Egoist British magazine and is monumental in James Joyce’s forceful literary shift into idiosyncratic language: the unique characteristic that differentiates a writer’s personal way of expression through the unusual use of normal words or phrases. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man concerns a young man’s coming of age. The main character Stephen Dedalus is a boy growing up in the Catholic setting of Ireland. Dedalus deconstructs his religious identity, and Joyce purposefully uses literary methods that best convey the story. While there may seem to be an untamed current pulling the narrative along through disconnected scenes, Joyce retains the element of unity through his ability to tie the narrative together in theme. Author James Joyce gradually loosens the narrative, doing so in time with the character’s personal revelation in the deconstruction of his religious constraints. The character Stephen Dedalus and the reader both synchronously become less constricted by the writing style Joyce employs as the story becomes more involved with Stephen’s life adventure and the religious rules that are described within the narrative itself.

Realistic Modernism in Ulysses

ULYSSES: James Joyce’s most notable work is his novel Ulysses, published in Paris in 1922. Due to the deemed obscenities within the work, it was prohibited from being published in the United Kingdom and the United States until the mid-1930’s when it eventually became legal to print. Until that time however, copies of Ulysses were smuggled into the U.S. and the U.K. while pirated copies were printed. The censorship in Ulysses stemmed from Joyce’s portrayal of many different bodily and sexual human experiences. Although it was considered a ‘dirty book’ in its time, many critics and fellow authors, including Anthony Burgess, consider the structural integrity of James Joyce’s employment of these topics. The author uses these subjects where necessary, and it demonstrates Joyce’s interest in the reality, which is inclusive of obscenities, of life. Ezra Pound also argued this point, stressing that the details formed part of their realism. Ulysses, among other offensive works of literature in their time, paved the way for subsequent works to be published without the exclusion of the previously censored portions.

There were at minimum, eighteen editions and diverse reactions that arose with each. The first and private edition was published on the day of James Joyce’s fortieth birthday: February 2nd, 1922. Due to a multitude of errors within Joyce’s work, many of which were deliberate in an attempt to ask more from the reader, there were many editions released that sought to mend these supposed errors. Ulysses was serialized in The Little Review in the U.S. initially, and there were many French printers who understood little English, therefore creating a dissonance in the type they set by hand from the original manuscript. The manuscript was difficult to read as the printers worked from Joyce’s longhand penmanship on a single-spaced flimsy sheet of paper. The 1984 edition produced by Hans Walter Gabler flaunted a correction of 5,000 previous errors in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The Gabler edition was swapped with the 1961 edition of Random House’s resetting of the Bodley Head 1960 corrected edition. Both the Gabler edition and the reset 1961 versions are most commonly used for reading James Joyce’s Ulysses today.

Proclaimed Joyce’s most famous work, Ulysses is formatted similarly to that of Homer’s infamous epic, The Odyssey. Joyce’s work is a story that elucidates the entire day of one person. In lieu of the style of Homer, Joyce creates a sense of time distortion due to the lengthy internal monologues of the main character Leopold Bloom that may only represent a fraction of the character’s real time. While the tone is scientific in part due to the literary modernism that was shifting the writing scene in the late 19th century and early 20th century, it also follows the theme in modernism of breaking from the traditional ways of writing. This novel was highly experimental in the techniques that Joyce used to portray his groundbreaking story. Ulysses is regarded as a landmark of modernist literature in the aftermath of Joyce’s masterpiece that profoundly displays the stream-of-consciousness, narrative perspectives that frequently change, and the interior monologue. The technique of the interior monologue mirrors the nature of one’s thoughts, and is therefore commended for its ability to portray thoughts in a realistic way. Poet and fellow modernist writer T.S. Eliot proclaims his admiration of Joyce’s novel, and argues that it is no fault of the author’s when readers do not appreciate or understand the work. Eliot also argues in favor of Joyce’s use of symbolism and his ability to tie the novel together through the various techniques he strategically applies. James Joyce artfully depicts the universal human experience through the elucidation of one man, who is indeed a Dublin Everyman. Through the singular experience of the main character, the novel Ulysses magnifies the paralleled experiences that encompass all humans worldwide.

Experimental Complexity

FINNEGANS WAKE: Another complex work in the form of a novel published in 1939 is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Although Joyce began creating the novel in 1923, it was not published until 16 years later. Between the 16 years from the novel’s beginning to its publishing, Joyce traveled, married, sought help for his eye problems, and sought psychological help for his daughter. After marrying Nora Barnacle in 1931, Joyce repeatedly traveled to Switzerland in search of treatment to help their daughter’s psychological condition and his own eye problems that escalated in seriousness over time. Despite his personal challenges, Joyce was able to create the work that represents a pinnacle of innovation in modern literature. Finnegans Wake was Joyce’s book that attempts to “take all history and knowledge for its subject matter and the workings of the dreaming mind for its form.” Within the novel is the concept of removing one’s identity and revealing the volatile material that shapes language; offering new perspectives and meanings to minds previously certain of themselves. James Joyce defended his work and its supposedly odd construction but because of the highly experimental style in Finnegans Wake, it is often reputed as an intensely difficult to read novel and is therefore left untouched by most common readers.

“We Must Write Dangerously”

After a surgery, Joyce died in January of 1941 in Zürich, Switzerland. He had moved there during World War II due to Germany’s occupation of France. Today, eighty-three years after his death at age 58, James Joyce’s work still profoundly influences literary academics and literature published today. In the book Conversations with Joyce, by Arthur Power, James Joyce lends the following writing advice: “The important thing is not what we write, but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously.” James Joyce’s words urge writers to be adventurous in their works! There is a wise reminder in the quote, one that beckons authors to free themselves from the restraints that are often self-imposed. Experimenting with an intention of playfulness and true joy from writing without limits is a technique that is bound to bring writers to the inner joy that writing from a place of genuine intent brings. Joyce emphasizes the importance of experimenting with writing and being willing to take a risk and fail if necessary. James Joyce also compels writers to focus on the method of delivery rather than solely on their content. This calls to mind the author’s professional use of various literary techniques, each of which bring value and added meaning to Joyce’s work in their chosen places. He also argues that, “A book should not be planned out beforehand, but as one writes it will form itself, subject, as I say, to the constant emotional promptings of one’s personality”. Here James Joyce offers writers an invitation to act on whichever whims they may have during their writing process. Whether or not one’s writings amount to be a landmark of their time like Ulysses, or are met with seeming perpetual rejection like Dubliners, they remain a successful example of writing when composed in authenticity. 

Discussion Questions:

The following questions are starting points to help you evaluate your writing style and apply the author's lessons to your own work. Feel free to comment below or answer the questions privately. Pick and choose what works for you.

1. James Joyce’s manuscript for Dubliners was rejected by publishers for over eight years. How does his eventual well-deserved publishing success inspire your personal determination?

2. Homer’s The Odyssey was a major source of inspiration for Joyce’s Ulysses. While plagiarism is never sanctioned, authors often draw upon ideas found in other works to kindle their own conversation. What literary work is often a role-model for your own pieces?

3. Both James Joyce’s use of idiosyncratic language and his quote on writing advice pushes authors to “write dangerously”. Idiosyncratic language is defined as using common phrases or words in an unusual way. Research various writing methods and try a writing exercise in one that you are unfamiliar with, even if you expect to fail. James Joyce encourages this!