An introduction to James Joyce: Modern, Catholic(?), Writer

James Joyce is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, an exemplar of “Modernist” literature, a pioneer of innovative styles such as ‘stream-of-consciousness,’ and a brilliant master of multiple literary genres such as short stories and the novel – but he is usually not considered a Catholic.

Though he was raised in a devout Irish Catholic family in Dublin, he explicitly rejected his Catholic faith as a young adult, and went into exile away from Ireland with his wife in his twenties, never to return. He famously wrote “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.”

And yet – as many scholars have noted, Joyce’s works and his worldview are permeated with the remnants of his childhood faith. Just about anyone who studies Joyce or writes any serious criticism of his works has to also understand the Catholic beliefs which shaped so much of his early life.

So, in a class on Modern Catholic Writers, why start with Joyce? Philosophically, he perhaps was ultimately more Modern than Catholic. Therefore, he offers one way of approaching a central question of this class, drawing on a tension inherent in our course title: What does it mean to be both “Modern” and “Catholic”? Are those two words compatible? Contradictory? A little of both? And how do authors with connections to Catholicism navigate this tension? How do they dramatize this conflict in their writings?

Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the oldest of 10 children. His father worked as a tax collector, and his mother was a devout Catholic. The young Joyce attended a Jesuit boarding school until 1891, but left because his family ran out of money (his father’s drinking problem and inability to hold steady employment was a major factor). In 1898 Joyce studied at the Catholic University College Dublin, but had already begun to move away from his faith (although earlier he had seriously considered becoming a Jesuit priest). In 1904 Joyce met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway on the West coast of Ireland, and together they eloped to Europe. In the same year Joyce first began to publish some of his short stories in magazines, and his writing career began.

Joyce was extremely well-read (thanks to his excellent Jesuit education) and filled his writings with allusions to the foundational classical and Christian texts of Western culture. He loved to experiment with language, freely using wordplay and puns. He became a master of English prose and one of the most influential writers of the “Modernist” style of storytelling, which we will need to understand as we read the short stories and novels in our class.

Modernism as a literary movement emerged in the early 20th century, typically marked by a rejection of older, traditional forms of writing. One prominent feature of Modernist literature, which we will see in Joyce and other writers this term, is the use of what is called “Free indirect discourse.” In this style of writing, the narrator’s voice is often merged with the voice or the thoughts of a character. This is seen as a repudiation of an older style of storytelling which featured a “godlike” omniscient, third-person narrator. The free indirect style undermines this ideal, making it hard to distinguish between the thoughts of the narrator and the characters.

As such, Modernist literature often mocks or subverts older ways of storytelling. It is often considered the literature of the post-believing, post-Christian world. It suggests that we can’t really understand the world as a whole, but only in fragments. It uses things like “free indirect discourse” to create irony and ambiguity rather than easy answers. It suggests that we often can’t fully understand people or literary characters, even if we are allowed “into their heads” in a story. And it often deals with mundane or “everyday” things, rather than with heroic characters or epic tales as in earlier literary traditions.

All of these features will be seen in Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners, which we’ll read excerpts from in class. His other famous works are the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the mock-epic novel Ulysses (which I read as part of a class in college and needed every minute of the teacher’s help to fully understand), and the highly experimental novel Finnegan’s Wake (which I confess I have tried to read about three times and could never get through it).

Joyce himself said that his goal in writing Dubliners was to “present Dublin to the world” and to lead to the “spiritual liberation” of his country. So we can see right here, Joyce still considered himself to be “spiritual.” As we read him, let’s be on the lookout for how he draws on spiritual concerns even in the midst of his proclaimed rejection of religion - our first example of a writer influenced strongly by both the traditional beliefs of his Catholicism, and the changing beliefs of the Modern world.