Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. He was educated at the Jesuit school, where he won prizes in national competition and gained a solid background in language, and religious and scholastic teachings. On entering University Collage, Dublin, Joyce rejected Catholicism and lost his enthusiasm for formal education. He published articles in the Fortnight Review, including "Ibsen's new drama," which earned a note of thanks from Lbsen, and "the day of the rabblement", in which he distances himself from the Irish Literary Revival, a movement championed by W. B. Weats, among others, but viewed by Joyce to be counter-productive. After completing a degree in modern languages, Joyce went to Paris to study medicine, but returned soon afterwards when he learnt that his mother was dying.

Joyce published book reviews in the Dublin daily express, tried his hand at a career singing, and started to write down episodes from his daily life. June 16,1904, the day he fell in love with Nora Barnacle, was later immortalized as "Bloomsday", the day in which his masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), takes place. Joyce and Nora left Ireland for Europe in October of the same year to begin life as expatriates, living in Switzerland, Italy, and France. His reasons for choosing self exile may be read in the declaration made by his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, in a portrait of the Artist as a young man (1916):"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can, using for my defence the only I allow myself to use-silence, exile, and cunning."

Joyce's first book chamber music (1907), contains 36 highly finished love poems that Joyce wrote to be sung. They reflect the influence of Elizabethan Lyricists and the English Lyric poets of the 1890's. They also reflect Joyce's love of the vocal music that influenced all his writing, and is especially evident in his later works that lend themselves particularly well to being read aloud. Although he had rejected Dublin and Catholicism, both were central to his writing. Irish published, repeatedly rejected his work on the grounds that it was libellous and blasphemous. Her earned a living from jobs as a language instructor, though writing articles for various newspapers, and from gifts made by friends and later patrons. W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound were two of his supporters who used their influence to find publishers willing to take Joyce's work.

The fruits of his recorded observations of life in Dublin appeared in Dubliners (1914). He revealed the extraordinary in everyday life in episodes from childhood to maturity in this collection of 15 finely crafted shorted stories. Each story contains a point, phrase, or symbol that encapsulates the essence of a complicated experience, which Joyce called an epiphany. The realism that worried the publishers (and delayed publication) was accomplished in part by dispensing with the tradition authorial voice and allowing the characters' thoughts and words to tell the story. In "The sisters", Joyce displays his interest in the resonance of language, as a young boy considers the impending of his old friend, father Flynn:

He had often said to me: I am not long for this world, and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were very true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strange to my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word somony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Patrons ensured the publication of a portrait of an artist as a young man (1916), which first appeared in serial from the literary review, the Egoist. Its is largely an autobiographical novel; the story of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, recreates Joyce's youth and home life up to his decision to leave Ireland. Joyce focuses on important episodes that shape Stephen's artistic development and makes considerable use of the stream of consciousness technique, a diverse that renders all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of a character with scrupulous psychological realism. For example, when Dedalus casually looks up to watch birds fly, his thoughts shift from considering their type, number, aerial acrobatics, and the sound of their cries, to the philosophical connection between birds and the intellect. When he ponders the antiquity of the act of watching the birds, the Egyptian god, Thoth, and an image of his modern, Irish equivalent spring to mind. Dedalas than experiences a feeling of connection with birds’ migratory habits and his own decision to leave Ireland with the following result;

Joyce’s passion for the tone and texture of the language is fully realised in this work. The dominant theme of Ulysses is again one of exile; from home, family, and religion. The plan of this novel is based on the Odyssey by Homer; each chapter parallels episodes from the epic, albeit obscurely. It is primarily concerned with one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus. Bloom looks for fulfilment in a symbolic search for a son, and Dedalas thought hi growing sense of dedication as a writer. Molly, in a soliloquy of one long, unbroken sentence, appears to succeed where the men fail, in finding satisfaction in saying yes to love and life:

…And how he kissed me under the moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down so he could feel my breast all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

The innovations in Ulysses broke with traditional rules governing the novel. It had a mixed reception from critics who called it everything from obscene and unintelligent to a masterpiece and a landmark in the history of modern fiction. Nowadays it has the status of a masterpiece and is seen as central to the modernist tradition.

Joyce published two collections of verse, poems penyeach (1927), and collected poems (1936), before he finished his most complex work, Finnegens wake (1939), in which Joyce attempted to embody a cyclical theory of history of history, the novel is written in the form of an interrupted series of dreams during one night in the life of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Symbolising all humility, Earwicker, his family, and acquaintances blend, as characters do in dreams, with one another and with various historical and mythical figures. Joyce carried his linguistic experimentation to its furthest point in this novel by writing English as a composite language based on combinations of parts of words from various languages. During the 17 years it took to complete, this novel was known as work in progress, with parts of it appearing in several magazines. Joyce was exhausted by the effort of writing Finnagans Wake. Despite many eye operations over the years, he was nearly blind at its finish, and relied on friends, Samuel Beckett among them, to help with revisions. He was discouraged by the books reception, which included complaints from many of old patrons and literay associates who judged it to be completely incomprehensible. Joyce last text remains an enigmatic work that places great demands on the readers.

After 20 years in Paris, Joyce was forced to flee France when the Germans invaded. He moved to Zurich where he died on January 13,1041. Stephen Hero, an early and more conventional version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published posthumously in 1944.

1. Welch, R The Concise Companion to Irish Literature Oxford Paperback, 2000