This book examines the life, works and critical reputation of James Joyce. The son of a dissolute Dublin election agent and rates collector who rose to become one of the brightest stars of European literary modernism, the composer of exquisite late Edwardian lyrics who subsequently created the radically new narrative styles of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and the writer who exiled himself from his native Ireland in order ceaselessly to remake it in his imagination, Joyce’s peripatetic career and complex reinvention of modern Western culture has made him a subject of enduring fascination and established him as perhaps the greatest...

This chapter provides a brief account of Joyce’s life and literary career, giving details both of his personal circumstances and the development of his reputation as a writer. It draws substantially on the biographies of Joyce mentioned in the ‘Further Reading’ section for its account. Readers of Joyce are particularly fortunate in being able to consult Ellmann’s now classic James Joyce (1983), which offers an extensive and influential reading of his life and work. Because no single account of Joyce’s life can claim to offer an absolutely authoritative interpretation of its multitudinous detail, readers in search of supplementary information about...

This chapter provides a descriptive account of, and critical commentary upon, the body of Joyce’s work. Although space and consideration is given to representative work from each of the volumes Joyce published during his lifetime, the discussion pays particular attention to the four prose works upon which Joyce’s literary reputation rests. While conforming throughout to the chronological order of Joyce’s publications, this section nonetheless seeks to establish a number of thematic and stylistic connections between his works. Because any overview of Joyce’s literary production must take account of the difficulties he faced actually seeing his work into print, brief attention...

This section focuses on the critical responses that Joyce’s work has evoked over the years. Although the scope and complexity of Joyce’s writing has provoked a sometimes bewildering variety of interpretations, the history of its critical reception may be divided into two main phases. The first phase, broadly encompassing the period between the publication of Ulysses in 1922 and the early 1960s, comprises contemporary attempts to come to terms with the literary, cultural and political challenge of Joycean modernism and the gradual emergence of Joyce’s status as a ‘classic’ modernist writer. A considerable number of these documents are gathered in...