The Writing Life of James Joyce

Joyce's first major work, Dubliners, a collection ofthe husband/wife relationship. Joyce began work
fifteen short stories, was published in 1914. Theyon his magnum opus, Ulysses, in 1914, completing
concentrate on the idea of an epiphany, ait in 1921. It was published in 1922 by Sylvia
moment when the main protagonist gainsBeach's Shakespeare and Company. In Ulysses,
self-awareness or understanding. The storiesJoyce employs the technique of stream of
follow a logical order from childhood toconsciousness and the action all takes place on
adolescence to maturity and finally death, the lastone single day, 16 June 1904. The book consists
story being entitled "The Dead." "A Portrait of theof eighteen chapters, each roughly covering one
Artist as a Young Man," an almost completehour of the day, beginning around 8am and
re-write of an abandoned novel called Stephenfinishing around 2am the following morning with
Hero was published in 1916. It is a biographicaleach of the chapters employing its own literary
novel depicting the coming of age of a youngstyle.
man, Stephen Dedalus, the fictional alter ego ofHe began work on Finnegan's Wake in 1923,
Joyce.however progress was slow due mainly to
The book was to pioneer some of Joyce'sdeclining health and failing eyesight, it was finally
modernist techniques that would be used widely inpublished in 1939. It abandoned all conventions of
his later works, including interior monologue. Hisplot, character construction and the language used
only published play, Exiles (1918) was a study ofis peculiar and obscure.