Essay on James Joyce
The young James Joyce and….. even younger kneeling beside his mother.
James Joyce was an Irish writer who lived from 1882 to 1941. He is one of the most important Modernist writers. Top people for critics and historians to write about is Shakespeare: guess who is next: yes, James Joyce. He wrote this collection of short stories called Dubliners.
(Not: The Dubliners!)
Any edition: they are all the same. You do not need to buy it!
Joyce wanted to write about the city he grew up in Dublin, Ireland. Number 2 on the map.
He married and had two children and moved to Europe and stayed there until he died.
The Joyce family. Lucia (left) Nora (wife, right)
Giorgio (right) and Joyce himself (upper left). Lucia was schizophrenic and was hospitalized shortly after this picture was taken.
He is buried in Zurich. And there are statues of him in Dublin.
He also wrote Ulysses (1922). This novel changed how everybody wrote fiction. It was banned by the American government for 11 years up until 1933.
Ok, so back to our final paper. This class is meant to challenge you to the point where you can write a “10 page research paper.” Now I don’t feel that the traditional cut and paste, biographical type paper, or wandering papers about …what? Social media bias, gun control, veganism, the environment, video games and violence etc etc… are not actually of much help when you need to actually write essays because they don’t really push you towards critical thinking. You could easily do a research paper and have no voice and no thesis. It’s just you cutting and pasting loads of data about a subject. As Nietzsche said “facts are stupid” That kind of a paper will not serve you in good stead once you transfer, since it does not help you to think.
So, think about what you have done already. You wrote, let’s say, 3.5 pages on Coleridge and Aubrey right? That is a 3.5 page paper that used ‘research’: Aubrey. So all we need to do is to write the same thing again: the only difference is we will need some more primary material (a poem, a story, a novel is considered primary material) and some more criticism. Easy to get that. Once we have a thesis that engages with all the material then off we go: so instead of “Frost at Midnight” and Aubrey imagine….
1.“Frost at Midnight” and 2. Aubrey
- “Frost at Midnight” and 4. Aubrey
- “Frost at Midnight” and 6. Aubrey
Get the idea: now obviously we cannot do that, that would be silly, but guess what. In your book there are three stories from Dubliners
So we have ‘The Sisters’
‘Araby’ and
‘Eveline’ all by James Joyce. Right there in your book.
I have attached them to this document just in case. So all we need is some criticism. Ok, look on Magill…guess what….
There are three Magill type things (same as you had for Coleridge and Tennyson) right there. So we are “doing” research: So that is SIX (6) pieces of ‘text’ to work with altogether: 3 stories and three Magill critics. You wrote 3.5 pages using two sources (Coleridge and Aubrey) so with Six sources you could easily write 3.5 x 3 = 10.5. It is more than enough material to work with because a large part of this paper is also your argument: you have to make room for that. Also since we cannot really read all of Dubliners we can also ‘cheat’ a bit. On Magill there is also one other critic that discusses the book Dubliners as a whole. So we can get glimpses into what is happening with other parts of the collection (the other stories) without having to read them all. It’s not really cheating : you need to learn what is going on in the collection and that critic is the way to learn it. It is all attached below.
If you feel like an extra challenge then I will also set a link for a longer academic type article on Dubliners if you wish to tackle it.
So we now have
- a) 3 stories by James Joyce. In your book/ and copied to this document (see below)
- b) 3 pieces of criticism (one for each story) by various people. I have attached these too! What a nice professor!
- c) 1 criticism on the collection as a whole by a critic. See below.
- d) And: for the fearless and brave: a 20 page academic article to pick some gems from to bolster a thesis. The link is at the bottom of this document.
Ok? Out of that you can easily fashion ten pages, because as with Aubrey/Coleridge: your voice does all the important work. We will do three in class writing assignments on Joyce so that you can get your voice out. As follows:
1) In class writing: summaries of the stories. Easy. The plots are easy. Just to stop you writing plot in your “essay.”
2) In class writing: summary of the general areas touched on by the criticism. Your job is to show me you understand what the critics are saying about Joyce. I will set a prompt for this. It will be just the same as you explaining Aubrey’s ideas to me.
3) In class ‘essay’ of your thesis. Nothing can come in with you: Just like Coleridge. Time to leave all the crutches behind and show me what you will be essaying. You may think you have a good thesis but when you go to write it down does it come out like you thought? Does your ‘essay’ work? It’s a chance for you to ‘essay’ your essay. This way I can see the skeleton of your argument without all the other stuff getting in the way. As we saw with your colleagues: perfectly good essays can be produced in class with just a paper and a pen and your brain.
Then once these tasks are done: you can write it up nice and proper: in class on the computer and at home saving it to your cloud so that you always have it!! Page 11 will be the Works Cited page. See sample: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/12/
4) Hand in the ten page paper on Joyce that you have worked on for a month: 10 pages, typed, stapled, double spaced, regular margins, proper academic title as I showed you. Clear thesis and voice etc..see rubric
