Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the quality of James Joyce’s work. It touches briefly upon his most renowned works, such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners and Ulysses. As if is the case with most prolific writers, his life greatly influenced his work, not only through his technique and unique style of writing, but also the approach he had in portraying his Irish Everyman in times of tumult and angst. It closes with the idea that his position in modern literature is undeniable irrefutable facility to commemorate the most mundane and profane human experiences as undeniable capacities for renewal and survival.
James Joyce’s oeuvre possesses a unique and unlimited appetite for popular culture, portraying not only the inner and outer lives of his melancholy and melodramatic characters, but also the fascination with the streets these characters frequent, in his effort to grab firm hold of the irresistible material of story-telling. His works set him apart from the other writers of his time and formulate “an aesthetic sense that was to be central to high modernism” (Murphy, 2009, p. 191). Joyce’s Dubliners seem to encompass all the subsequent modernist techniques, such as “uncertainty, particularly in the stories’ endings, symbolism, linguistic intensity, an aesthetic rather than moral focus, linguistic experimentation an interest in the internal workings of the individual mind as much as a shared external reality” (Murphy, 2009, p. 192). His characters grieve over the present age, possessing an almost aching connection with their past, and a rebellion of a complex personality, which saw routine as restrictive, leading to a life of aggravation, heavily imposed self-discipline and violent behavior.
The two works Joyce is most widely renowned for would certainly be Ulysses, published in 1922 and Finnegan’s Wake, published later on, in 1939. In these epic works, Joyce’s fascination with the power of words to convey ideas fully emerged in what is now referred to as the stream of consciousness technique, of which he is considered to be the innovator, along with other prominent literary names such as Virginia Wolf and Dorothy Richardson. He allowed the characters’ thoughts to flow freely, merging with the outside world and truthfully depicting their inner state of mind, thus portraying both the cause and effect of the characters’ musings. Hence, by refusing the rigid limitations of the traditional narrative, Joyce managed to plunge deep into his characters’ subconscious and not be the mediator between the readers and the characters, but to become a spectator himself.
While writers like Henry James, Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells portrayed the post-Victorian cynicism and estrangement in their difficult, rigidly formal adherence to anti-romanticism, Joyce’s unique and utterly different works raised quite a controversy with their sovereignty of language and unconventional content. He exemplified a psychological intricacy which “explores the fundamental tensions between imagination and memory, narration and history, self and language” (Murphy, 2009, p. 193). His works continued to challenge convention on a regular basis, offering a challenge not only to the scholars, but the readers as well, with his unique literary sketches which present mere vignettes in daily situations, where the event itself has little, if any profoundness and it is the character’s personal revelations which evoke a sense of a shared, humanized experience.
The name of James Joyce is widely renowned and holds a firm and inimitable position in modern literature, whose work poses numerous difficult questions for the readers as well as for the critics. His early artistic revolt and angst against middle-class Ireland has developed into an irrefutable facility to commemorate the most mundane and profane human experiences as undeniable capacities for renewal and survival.
References:
Damrosch, David and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. (2009). The Longman Anthology of British Literature. (4th ed.) Harlow: Longman.
Murphy, Neil. (2009). James Joyce’s Dubliners and Modernist Doubt: The Making of a Tradition. In H. Bloom (Ed.), James Joyce. (pp. 191-204). New York: Infobase Publishing.
Parrinder, Patrick. (1984). James Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
