James Augustine Joyce, who revolutionized English literature with his shocking language and literary style, was born February 2, 1882, in a Dublin suburb. The oldest son in a Catholic family of ten children, Joyce was educated largely by the Jesuits. At sixteen, the young man considered entering the priesthood but realized that celibacy was not for him. Shortly thereafter he made an abrupt about-face and rejected the church entirely, although it dominated his imagination for the rest of his life. He rebelled against his Catholic upbringing and against the domestic politics of his native land, leaving Dublin for the European continent in 1904 and never returning. Joyce's fiction, including Dubliners, dismantles and critiques middle-class Irish Catholic society, questioning marriage, faith, and nationalism.
Ireland and England. Even though Joyce claimed to be disgusted by its cultural paralysis and its political ineptitude, Ireland, and specifically his hometown of Dublin, dominated his literary imagination throughout his life. To understand his insistence upon depicting the stagnation and hopelessness of the countrywhich he certainly exaggerated to some degree- it is crucial to be aware of the historical legacy of the Irish.
