James Joyce

LIFE AND MAIN WORKS (1882-1941)

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 into a middle class Catholic family whose social status and financial resources gradually diminished. The decay of the father became representative for Joyce of the failures of his own country.
Joyce went to two Jesuit school and graduated in Modern Languages at University College in Dublin.

Finding life in Ireland an obstacle to his own artistic development, he committed himself to a life of self-imposed exile : he went first to Paris, then to Pola and finally to Trieste. In Trieste he finished his first two works : A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ; Dubliners (1914) , a collection of fifteen  short stories (The Dead), and partly autobiographical.

At the outbreak of World War I he left for Zurich, where he started working on his masterpiece Ulysses.

After an eye-operation he moved to Paris, there Joyce was considered one of the prophets of Modernism and these Ulysses was finally published (1922). Here he started to write his last great novel, Finnegans Wake until 1923 and came out in 1939.

When France was occupied by German, Joyce's family (except his daughter) returned to Zurich where he died in 1941.

The relationship between Joyce and Ireland is complex. At surface level he seems to rejected everything that was Irish ; at a deeper level all of Joyce's works are centred on Ireland and on the Dublin he knew.

The Dubliners embody Joyce's idea of "paralysis". The paralysis of will leads ordinary man to accept the limitation of the society where they live. 

Joyce himself coined the definition "epiphany" which means 'manifestation, showing' , to indicate that moment when a simple object of fact suddenly flash out with meaning and make a person realize himself.

World War I (1914-18)

In June 1914 Austria and Germany declared war on Serbia. Following this, France, Russia and Britain sided with Serbia. During the war a strong wave of patriotism and hatred of German swept Britain. In 1915 Italy joined France and Britain. In 1917 Russia withdrew, after Bolshevik Revolution (1917-20), but United States entered the war on Britain's side. The conflict end in 1918 with the victory of Britain, France and Italy.

Industry and immigration in the USA

Large industrial enterprises were developing quickly and vastly, often uneducated immigrant proletariat was crowding the slums of big cities. Many of these workers were black people (ex slaves) coming from Southern States, but many other came from central and eastern Europe (peasant from Italy and jews from polish ghettoes).

The USA: the beginning of imperialism

In the 1890s  the Frontier was ceasing to exist. Up to that time the Frontier had been a an essential part of of the American dream of freedom and opportunity.
Thus began the imperialistic policy of the USA, almost as a compensation for the loss of the internal frontier.
In 1898 the USA annexed the Hawaian Island and in the same year waged a short war against Spain in Cuba, to defend the economic interests on the island. However Cuba became a free republic a few years later.
In 1903 the President Theodore Roosvelt obtained the lease of the Panama Canal Zone Thus enlarging the American territory with strategic positions.

The Georgian Age

George V reigned from 1910 to 1936.
Life until the World War I was in many ways the British counterpart of the continental Belle époque: Victorian habits were continued and the upper class still thought of itself as the centre of the civilized world.
World War I put an abrupt end to all this.

The Edwardian Age

The son of Queen Victoria, Edward VII came to the throne in 1901.
In 1906 was held a general election and the LIberal Party won.
The Edwardian Age (1901-1910) saw the culmination of the process hat had characterized British social life for the past two centuries: a widespread industralization; the growth of urban areas; an increase in population; the extension of the transport network.

The Industrial Revolution

DRAMATIC CHANGES IN TOWN AND IN THE COUNTRY

First of all the Industrial Revolution made profound economic and social changes.

Thousand of people moved to the new industrial towns where the urban slums became synonymous with the Industrial Revolution.

However  in 1834 the new Poor law was far from a solution to the problems because the poor remained amassed in workhouse that resembled jails.

THE DEBATE ON THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The industrial civilization produced both greatest prosperity and greatest poverty.

On the one hand the majority of the ruling class  argued economic and social doctrine of "Laissez-faire" illustrated by Adam Smith, on the other hand liberal thinkers and representatives of the new social philosophy opposed to that theory.

On the one hand the liberal thinkers disapproved the lack of human sympathy shown by the utilitarian doctrine.
On the other hand born socialist theories of Marx and Engels from the conditions of working class and the damages done to the enviroment.

WRITERS ON THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION