Bøker av James Joyce

Dubliners, a collection of James Joyce's fifteen short stories, was first published in 1914. It provides a realistic portrayal of Irish middle-class life in Dublin and the surrounding area in the early 20th century. When the stories were written, Irish nationalism was at its peak, and there was a huge desire for a sense of national identity and mission. Standing at a nexus of history and culture, Ireland was being jolted by numerous converging ideas and forces. They focus on the paralysis theme and Joyce's concept of an epiphany, which is a character's transformational self-understanding or illumination (Joyce felt Irish nationalism stagnated cultural progression, placing Dublin at the heart of a regressive movement). Following Joyce's categorization of the collection into childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life, the following stories are written in the third person and deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older individuals. The first three stories in the book are narrated by children. Many of the Dubliner's characters later made cameos in Ulysses by James Joyce.

The first novel of Irish author James Joyce is titled A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. Stephen Dedalus describes his early years in a voice that is not his own yet is sensitive to his sentiments, using vocabulary that evolves as he does. Stephen is coming to grips with the world, and the reader experiences his worries and confusion with him. Word gets throughout Clongowes Wood College that some guys have been caught "smuggling."When Stephen's father incurs debt, the family vacates their comfortable suburban house and moves to Dublin. Stephen is aware that he won't be going back to Clongowes.The boys in Stephen's class are taken on a religious retreat while the author indulges in sensuous pleasures. Stephen gives the passages on pride, guilt, retribution, and the Four Last Things particular attention (death, judgment, Hell, and Heaven).Both his mother and father criticize him for returning to the Church. He concludes that Ireland's limitations prevent him from expressing himself as an artist fully. He declares his links to his home country before leaving for his self-imposed exile.

Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are usually found in most lists of the great classics of the twentieth century. But, as Burgess points out in his introduction: "they are highly idiosyncratic books and 'difficult' books, admired more often than read, when read, rarely read through to the end, when read through to the end, not often fully, or even partially, understood. This is of course especially true of Finnegans Wake. ...This present reduction of Finnegans Wake to the length of an ordinary novel-garnished with an introduction and a running commentary- is my own attempt to bring a great masterpiece to a larger audience..." [the reduction is to that of about 1/3 of its original length]. It took Joyce 17 years to create this extraordinary book (and his final work), written in Paris after the publication of Ulysses. It is written not so much in English as in a language which combines, very often as puns, English with several other languages. Burgess was a huge admirer of Joyce's work and a great interpreter. His introduction to the shortened version throws a massive light on the structure and meaning of the work and perhaps, most importantly, its position in the literary canon as a great comic book. " Before we start reading we ought to put off the mask of solemnity and prepare to be entertained. This is one of the most entertaining books ever written". [Burgess]

This volume combines two of novelist and lyric poet James Joyce's poetry books -- Chamber Music (1907), and Pomes Penyeach (1927), featuring a collection of 49 poems -- plus "The Holy Office" and "Gas from a Burner."

The novel traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories that form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early 20th century. The stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people.

It is only James Joyce's towering genius as a novelist that has led to his comparative neglect as a poet. And yet his poems not only occupy a pivotal position in Joyce's career, they are also magnificently assured achievements in their own right. 'Chamber Music' is an extraordinary début, fusing a broad swathe of styles with characteristically sharp irony and joyful verbal exuberance. 'Pomes Penyeach' confronts painful personal issues of adultery, jealousy and betrayal and so paves the way for the more detached and fully realized treatment of these feelings in Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses. Also included here is 'Ecce Puer', written for his new-born grandson, as well as juvenilia, satires, translations, limericks and a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

After ten long years spent away from Dublin, Richard, Bertha and their young illegitimate son Archie are back home. Despite expectations of comfort and domesticity, the couple's return to the place where they first met triggers an existential questioning, an anxiousness which is exacerbated by meetings with old friends and lovers. James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles builds upon one of his most famous short stories, 'The Dead', to provide a profound exploration of jealousy, doubt and the complexity of human desire.

?Let my country die for me.? A modern retelling of Homer?s Odyssey, James Joyce?s Ulysses is touted as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. In a series of events that take place on a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel chronicles the movements of Leopold Bloom, Mary Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, as they act as the contemporary counterparts of Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope from the epic poem. Holding a mirror to modernist concerns, Joyce draws up a convincing picture of the similarities and the stark differences between his novel and the epic. Highly evocative, Ulysses has had a deep impact on literature and grips readers with its characterization and sardonic humour.