JAMES JOYCE
(1882-1941)
Lecture 5
2
JAMES JOYCE
THE REPUTATION
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
The Joyce paradox
3
A patriotic cosmopolitan
A modern classicist
A faceless autobiographer
An elite writer of the people
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
4
JAMES JOYCE (1882–1941)
THE LIFE
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Family, 1888
5
Jim at six
with parents
and grandfather
Murray
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Down in the world, late 1880s
6
He was angry […] with the
change of fortune which was
reshaping the world about him
into a vision of squalor and
insincerity.
(A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man)
17 North Richmond St.,
Dublin
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
‘The Pater’
7
Simon Dedalus:
‘A medical student, an oarsman, a
tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting
politician, a small landlord, a small
investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a
story-teller, somebody’s secretary,
something in a distillery, a taxgatherer, a bankrupt and at present a
praiser of his own past.’
John Stanislaus Joyce
(A Portrait)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Boarding school, 1888
8
Jim with the Jesuits at
Clongowes Wood College,
County Kildare.
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Catholic University of Ireland, 1898
9
The university! […] Pride after
satisfaction uplifted him like
long slow waves.
(A Portrait)
University College, Dublin in
the 1890s
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
…and the competition
The grey block of Trinity
on his left, set heavily in
the city's ignorance like a
dull stone set in a
cumbrous ring, pulled
his mind downward
(Portrait)
Trinity College, Dublin, 1900s
Graduation, 1902
11
—Well, it’s a poor
case, she said, when a
university student is so
dirty that his mother has
to wash him.
—But it gives you
pleasure, said Stephen
calmly.
(A Portrait)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Medical student, Paris, 1902
12
[In his mother’s letters to him,
her] solicitude is heart breaking,
he is not to touch the drinking
water unless it is filtered and
boiled. She assures him that
another money order will be sent
the moment she can get some.
[...] His letters veer from
arrogance to self-pity. He is
cold, unsettled and cannot afford
an oil stove. He has not eaten for
forty-eight hours.
(Edna O’Brien, James Joyce)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Easter, 1903
13
Nother dying, come home.
Father.
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
The Martello Tower, 1903
14
Once a military fortress
later students’ digs,
Sandycove,
South of Dublin
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Martello Tower today
15
The Joyce
museum in the
distance,
Sandycove,
2007
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Bloomsday,16 June 1904
16
Finns Hotel,
Dublin
Where Nora
once worked as
chambermaid
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Nora Barnacle (1884 – 1951)
17
The face that launched
a thousand pages
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Greetings from Pola, 1904
18
To Nick,
from his English
master…
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Joyce in Trieste
19
1904–15,
1919–20
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
‘Why not go back to Dublin?’
20

‘Have I ever left it?’
(to Mrs Sheehy Skeffington)

‘It would prevent me from writing about Dublin.’
(to Philippe Soupault)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
The portraits behind Portrait
21
Ezra Pound,
contacted in 1913
Harriet Shaw Weaver,
contacted in 1914
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
‘Pull out his eyes…’
22
Suffering from iritis
…and glaucoma
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Paris, 1924
23
Lucia and James …
‘… two people going to the
bottom of a river, one
falling and the other diving’
(C. G. Jung)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
The Joyce family grave
24
13 January 1941,
Buried in Friedhof Flüntern, Zürich
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
25
JAMES JOYCE
THE WORK
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Dubliners: the troubles of publishing
26
Ten years of rejections and difficulties








1904-5
1905
1906
1907
1907
1909
1912
1914
first ten stories written
manuscript sent to Grant Richards in
London
three stories added; 1st objections
‘The Dead’ written
1st contract cancelled by Richards
Contract with Maunsell & Co., Dublin
Sheets destroyed by Dublin printer
New contract wit Richards,
PUBLICATION in London
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Dubliners – Ireland’s ‘moral history’
27
Central theme: paralysis under four of its aspects:
Childhood
‘The Sisters’ (paralysis), ‘Araby’ (disillusionment)
Adolescence
‘Eveline’ (gender , culture, society),
‘After the Race’ (Hungarian relevance)
Maturity
‘Clay’ (feminist and narratological readings)
‘A Painful Case’ (Tolstoy), ‘Grace’ (Dante)
Public life
‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ (politics),
‘The Dead’ (complex synthesis)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Dubliners rejected in London, 1906
28
Joyce’s answer to complaints of dirt and vulgarity
(his ’scrupulous meanness’)
It is not my fault that the odour of
ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs
round my stories. I seriously believe
that you will retard the course of
civilisation in Ireland by preventing
the Irish from taking one good look at
themselves in my nicely polished
looking-glass.
(Letter to Grant Richards)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man:
an experimental Bildungsroman
29

Key episodes from the childhood, adolescence, and
early adulthood of Stephen Dedalus.

The ‘nets’: family, Church, history, and politics

The goal of flight: creative freedom

Tone: ironic distance and lyric compassion mixed

Theme: role of language in awakening to creativity
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Thematic pattern: three quotes
30
“When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it
back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language,
religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether
it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church."
“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time
the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my
soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Mental growth and language
31
STAGE 1 – CHILDISH
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a
moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was
coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby
tuckoo...
STAGE 5 – MATURE
APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in
order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life
and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it
feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the
millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy
of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
Mythical and religious allusions
32
Icarus/Daedelus
"Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in
good stead. „
St Stephen proto-martyr
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
33
JAMES JOYCE
THE AFTERLIFE
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)
A writer’s tribute
34
We are all Joyceans
Given time, Joyce will flow through the arteries of
our ordinary, nonreading, life, for a great writer
influences the world whether the world likes it or
not and the blessing of the ordinary must eventually
transfigure it.
(Anthony Burgess, Here Comes Everybody)
Lecture 5: Joyce (Farkas)