James Joyce in Padua by James Joyce. New York. 1977. Random House. 0394409906. Edited, translated and introduced by Louis Berrone. 147 pages. hardcover. Drawing of James Joyce by Burt Silverman. Jacket design: Susan Shapiro.
DESCRIPTION - In April 1912 in Padua, James Joyce wrote two essays as part of an examination to qualify for a teaching position in the Italian public school system. These essays were only recently recovered from the archives of the University of Padua by Louis Berrone of Fairfield University. Because Professor Berrone was interested in the influence of Dickens on Joyce, he made a special trip to Padua, hoping he would be able to find the manuscript mentioned by Joyce in a letter to his brother, dated April 25, 1912: ‘Today I had to write my English theme - Dickens and saw my English examiner, an old, ugly spinster from the tight little island - a most dreadful fRump (reformed spelling).' Professor Berrone was rewarded for his efforts by an essay not only on Dickens, but one on the Renaissance. Written in Italian, this latter essay (‘L'influenza letteraria universal del rinascimento') underlines the need to discover and sustain the spiritual life in order to counterbalance the detailed eternal thrust of the Renaissance. In the essay on Dickens, written in English, Joyce expresses an enthusiasm for Dickens that may surprise many scholars. Besides these two essays and the translation, Professor Berrone provides a detailed introduction showing the particular circumstances of Joyce's life during the time he wrote these essays. For Joyce it was a critical period; he had already written three chapters of A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and hand ULYSSES in mind. In the afterword to each essay, Professor Berrone reveals how many of the ideas in these two Padua essays were an essential part of Joyce's critical apparatus, influencing his work in both fiction and nonfiction.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 2, 1882. He was the oldest of ten children in a family that experienced increasing financial difficulties during his childhood. After attending Clongowes Wood College and Belevedere College (both Jesuit institutions) in Dublin, he entered the Royal University, where he studied languages and philosophy. Upon his graduation, in 1902, Joyce left Ireland for France but returned the following year because his mother was dying. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle (they fell in love on June 16, ‘Bloomsday’), and in October of that year they went together to Europe, settling in Trieste. In 1909 and again in 1912 Joyce made unsuccessful attempts to publish Dubliners, a collection of fifteen stories that he intended to be ‘a chapter of the moral history of my country focused on Dublin, ‘the centre of paralysis.’ In 1914 Dubliners finally appeared, followed by the semiautobiographical novel A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, a reworking of an earlier manuscript, STEPHEN HERO. During the First World War Joyce and Nora lived in Zurich; in 1920 they moved to Paris, where Ulysses was published in 1922. FINNEGANS WAKE, Joyce’s most radical and complex work, began appearing in installments in 1928 and was published in its entirety in 1939. After the German occupation of Paris, Joyce and Nora (who were married in 1931) moved to Zurich, where he died in January. His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, ‘For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.’
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