The Life of James Joyce - Claire Dennis

For James Joyce, writing was a constant struggle. His works were censored, banned and even burned. Before he was 40 years old, he had undergone 10 eye operations and was nearly blind. He lived in dire poverty for the majority of his life. And even with these terrific odds against him, Joyce prevailed and went on to write some of the strangest and most extraordinary works in the history of British poetry.

James Joyce was born in 1882 in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. His father, John, had run down his distillery business, and continued to try a variety of professions, including politics and tax collecting. His mother, Mary Jane, was a devout Catholic woman who played the piano and worked to hide the family’s poverty, maintaining a solid middle-class façade. James grew up attending Jesuit schools in Dublin, and attended the University College, Dublin. After his graduation in 1902, he fled from his dissatisfaction with the dirty, boring city, packed his bags, left his family behind and began his exploration of the world.

In his middle years, Joyce studied medicine, almost became a professional singer, taught languages in Trieste and Switzerland, and finally settled in Paris to focus on literature. However, James’ plans changed when his mother died in 1904, and, after the onset of World War I, he moved with his family to Zurich, Switzerland, where he began developing the characters of his novel Ulysses. After a few years with his family, James moved back again to Paris, and in 1922, his novel Ulysses was published. Soon after, James began experiencing chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma, and still lived in great poverty. However, Joyce continued his passion for writing and published his novels, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a play called Exilesin and a collection of poems called Chamber Music.

In these works, James is noted for his experimentation in diction and use of language. What he wrote seemed far advanced for the literature of his time period. He invented words, used puns and alluded to mythology, history and literature in his writing. Often his works included an extensive interior monologue, which was technically innovative for that time.

In 1931, James married a chambermaid named Nora Barnacle, and dedicated the rest of his life to his writing. He never had kids and he never achieved fame or financial fortune during his lifetime. In 1941, just before his fifty-ninth birthday, James died of blindness, illness and poverty in Zurich, Switzerland after the fall of France in World War II.

Although he was confronted with constant adversity throughout his life and was never satisfied with his works, James’ reputation has grown immensely since his death, and today his literature is studied across the world.