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James Joyce (1882 - 1941)
Joyce's formal education began in 1888 at a Jesuit boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. After three years, he was forced to withdraw when his father could no longer pay the tuition. With the assistance of the Joyces' family priest, Father John Conmee, James was able to resume his education at another Jesuit school, Belvedere College, in 1893. Joyce later described his experiences at Belvedere in his autobiographical novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. His first monetary and academic awards for his writing were won during his final year at Belvedere, from which he graduated in 1898. Joyce moved on to Dublin's University College and during his first summer there also had his first sexual experiences in the city's brothels. He also first began receiving noteworthy attention for his writings, including a letter from Ibsen regarding a favorable article Joyce had written about one of his plays. In addition, Joyce's college years saw the beginning of his close friendship with Francis Skeffington, a pacifist and radical feminist who later took his wife, suffragist Anna Sheehy's name in marriage in defiance of convention, and would be martyred during the 1916 Easter uprising. In 1902 Joyce graduated from University College and left Dublin "to study medicine" in Paris. He in fact sought to escape what he perceived as narrow and restricting influences in his life, including his family and the Church, and spent most of his time in Paris writing, drinking, and squandering the funds his family sent him. The following year he returned to Dublin upon the death of his mother, after which he formerly renounced organized religion, and in 1904 met his life companion, Nora Barnacle. Joyce's relationship with Nora was a curious one. While James came from a middle-class background, had a college education, and was enormously well-read and intellectual, Nora was working as a chambermaid in a Dublin hotel when she met James, was largely uneducated, and did not understand Joyce's writings or opinions. Joyce seems to have loved Nora largely for her vivacious and earthy personality. Their first sexual encounter consisted of Nora masturbating James, allegedly on their first date, though other sources claim this was two months into the relationship. At a time when such things were frowned upon by "polite" society, James and Nora lived together for 26 years and had two children before they were finally married in 1930. Because of Joyce's relationship with Nora, most biographers, apparently ignorant of the fact that it is possible for gay men to have loving relationships with women, father children, and still be gay, tend to leave out any hints that Joyce was anything but heterosexual, and even gay historians tend to leave Joyce out of their accounts and rosters. Yet clues that Joyce certainly appreciated the sexual allure of men and was at least bisexual can be found in his writings, most notably in his poem, "On the Beach at Fontana," an expression of tender affection for a beautiful young man. Eloping together in 1905, James and Nora toured Europe before settling in Austria-Hungary, where James taught English at a school in Berlitz. Six months later they were forced to relocate to Trieste when civil unrest in Pola caused the Austrian government to expel all foreigners from that region. It was at Trieste that their first child, Giorgio, was born. After a brief stay in Rome, where Joyce was considerably richer but miserable, the couple returned to Trieste, where their daughter Lucia was born. During this time, Joyce completed his short story collection, Dubliners, and revised Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Portrait first began publication in serial form in The Egoist in 1914. In 1915, as World War I brought heavy fighting along the Italian-Austrian border, James and Nora moved from Trieste to Zurich. The year 1916 saw the Easter Rebellion, in which over 500 protesters for Irish liberty died. Among those killed was Francis Skeffington, who was shot by British troops while trying to stop fellow protesters from vandalizing and looting stores. Another friend, Patrick Pearse, with whom Joyce had studied Gaelic, was executed for treason, as was Sir Roger Casement, who had gone to Germany to seek assistance for the Irish rebels. The Easter Rebellion had a profound influence on Joyce, most notably in his novel Ulysses, a presentation of eighteen hours in the lives of three Dublin people, paralleled with the adventures of Ulysses, Penelope, and Telemachus. The remainder of World War I saw the first publications of Joyce's works in the States, and the beginnings of the glaucoma which would gradually steal his eyesight. After a brief postwar return to Trieste, Joyce and his family settled in Paris in 1920, where they would remain for twenty years. Here Joyce continued his writings, as well as drinking and dining with the money his patrons sent him, being photographed by Man Ray and Berenice Abbott, and socializing with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and the emerging young writers and artists of the Lost Generation. The same year that Joyce first settled in Paris, a US court halted the serialized publication of Ulysses by a literary magazine, on grounds that the novel was obscene. Ulysses quickly became an underground classic, and Joyce became a household name. A 1922 publication of Ulysses in book form by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris was an instant bestseller. Joyce began his last great work, Finnegans Wake, a Dublin hotelier's dream diary set in novel form, under the title Work in Progress in 1923. In 1932, his grandson, Stephen James Joyce, was born to Giorgio and his wife Helen. Soon afterward, in one of Joyce's darkest episodes, his daughter Lucia suffered a nervous breakdown and was placed in an institution. The following year, US John Woolsey lifted the ban on Ulysses, handing down a legal definition of obscenity which would be standard in American courts for decades afterwards, and would in fact be used to uphold the legality of ONE and other publications during the formative pre-Stonewall years of the gay rights movement. Ulysses first appeared in book form in the US in 1934, the same year Lucia began treatment for her mental illness under Dr. Carl Jung. By now, Joyce's eyesight had deteriorated so badly that in his notebooks words had to be written so large that a single one took up an entire page. Finnegans Wake, considered Joyce's most intriguing and even incomprehensible work, was completed and published in 1939. When German troops invaded France in 1940, the Joyces fled to Switzerland, settling in Zurich. Six months later, on 13 January, Joyce suffered a perforated ulcer and died. Over sixty years after his death, Joyce remains a major influence on literature. Together with Gertrude Stein, his stream of consciousness style of writing influenced Hemingway and other authors of the later twentieth century. One of the most pivotal films of the last few years, American Beauty, shows a clear influence from Ulysses, and in 2000 the editorial board of the Modern Library named Ulysses as the best novel of the twentieth century. James Joyce's works include "The Holy Office," (1905); Chamber Music, (1907); "Gas from a Burner," (1912); Dubliners, (1914); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, (1916); Exiles, (1918); Ulysses, (1922); Pomes Penyeach, (1927); Collected Poems, (1936); Finnegans Wake, (1939); with posthumously published works including Stephen Hero, (1944); Letters, Vol. 1, (1957); Critical Writings, (1959); Letters, Vol. 2-3, (1966); Giacomo Joyce, (1968); and Selected Letters, (1975). Work in Progress: A James Joyce Website James Joyce Resource Center Home Page IQ Infinity: the unknown James Joyce James Joyce: The Brazen Head - Author Homepage TNR Online | James Joyce by HG Wells BBC Education - Biography - James Joyce JAMES JOYCE'S AMERICAN BEAUTY The Pervert with the Heart of Gold
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