James Joyce Research Paper

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, known as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and his wife Marry Murray Joyce. Joyce’s father’s rampant drinking lead him to neglect the family’s finances and drove the family’s estate into the ground. Joyce only attended Jesuit-run schools, first a high class boarding school, Clongowes, then belvedere, and then finally the University College of Dublin. James Joyce was the oldest child in a family of ten. His parents both came from wealthy families, but lost their fortune, and James Joyce was forced out of Clongowes Boarding School because his father was no longer able to pay the expensive tuition. Because

Because of this Joyce was exposed to the core of the Irish culture at the time, leaving him angry at the church for telling everyone that everything is alright, and by the end of his university years he had rejected Catholicism as a whole. Joyce was a man that could not stand back and watch as his country was paralyzed by the church and its ideals. Because Joyce grew up in Dublin he was well versed in the traditions and tensions of lower class Dublin life, and he was able to portrait his first-hand experience with the world though his novels. Unlike many authors, Joyce was not afraid to show the dirty side of life because of his un-filtered stile of writing he received large amounts of criticism from publishers and the media. Joyce was well aware of the declining living conditions of the lower class, as he was struggling to feed his own family, and this was one of his major issues he touched upon in his works. Many of Joyce’s works were banned for obscenity and prosecuted as indecent, “unfit for human consumption”. However, Joyce defended his works and would not compromise them at the request of the publishers and the pressure the church and media had upon

Joyce wrote frankly about issues in his works that would not usually be discussed, such as the “obscene” moments in a person’s life or even the state of Ireland at that time. Because of the controversial nature of his writing, Joyce struggled to find a publisher willing to print his works. At the time, English law stated that a publisher was just as guilty of any charges of obscenity as the writer of the book. James Joyce submitted the manuscript of his short story collection The Dubliners to over fifteen publisher, however, none of them would touch the book because of its sexual nature. When Joyce finally found a publisher willing to publish his collection, The London House of Grant Richards, They demanded changes to many of the stories. Joyce would not budge. Even with Joyce’s declining financial status, he would not cave to the demands of the publisher. Later Richards would back out of the publishing dead, but then Joyce threated to lawyer up and sue Richards for breach of contract. After over nine years, The Dubliners was finally printed without any of the cuts demanded by the publishers, and it was well received by many. James Joyce’s most controversial work was Ulysses, published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach, Producing outrage and disgust. Joyce defended his creation saying, “If Ulysses is not fit to read then life is not fit to live” (Werner 92) because there is nothing in Ulysses that is not found in everyday