James Joyce - His life and work

James Joyce was born in Dublin, son of a talented but feckless father who is accurately described by Stephen Dedalus in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". The elder Joyce drifted steadily down the financial and sociale scale, his family moving from house to house, each one less genteel and more shary than the previous. James Joyce's whole education was Catholic. From a comparatively early age Joyce regarded himself as a rebel …

…a new prose style; besides he created a rather startling and brusque vocabulary. Most conspicuous of his innovations is his use of the so called "stream-of-consciousness" or interior monologue technique, the intention of which is to approximate the operation of the human mind, in a waking or a dreaming state. Critics have spoken of him as a great creative artist and the reader of modern fiction will note his marked influence upon many later writers.