James Joyce once claimed that he had written his works in such detail that they would “keep the professors busy” for 200 years. Joyce died over 80 years ago, and the professors (and students) are still busy reading, discussing, and writing about his books. This class will focus on Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners (1914) and his first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) with particular attention to the development of Joyce’s career and prose style and the relation of each work to the fictional genre(s) in which it participates. We will discuss the relationship of the two books to early 20th century Irish literature and the development of what we now call international literary “modernism.” We will begin by discussing stories from Dubliners, including his early masterpiece “The Dead,” and then focus in-depth on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If time permits, we will finish the class by reading and discussing the first chapter of his monumental modern novel Ulysses.

The primary focus of the class will be on close and detailed reading of the texts and discussion, with some brief lectures included to provide historical context.