First published in 1916, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is James Joyce’s first novel and a milestone of modern literary history. It is the origin of many of the post-modern techniques he refined in later works such as "Finnegans Wake" and "Ulysses".The novel describes the emotional and mental development of the main protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, from childhood to independent artist. Stephen grows up in the deeply nationalistic and religious culture of Ireland. During his time at Jesuit schools and university, he struggles to find his own identity and break free of the culture of his childhood. He eventually leaves the church, university, his parents and his country in order to find his true self.The novel is strongly autobiographical,  Stephen’s development and experiences are, to a large extent, similar to Joyce’s own. On the other hand, the style develops in line with the character. While, initially, the language is childish and naïve, it changes to increasingly academic and intellectual the older Stephen gets.

Stephen Dedalus è un bambino curioso a cui piace ascoltare le storie del padre Simon; è sempre rimasto stupito ed estasiato dalle tante cose nuove che la vita continua a metter davanti ai suoi occhi. Giunto il momento viene iscritto alla scuola gestita dai gesuiti per famiglie benestanti.Un giorno, durante un gioco spericolato tra allievi, il giovane Stephen viene spinto accidentalmente dentro un fosso pieno d'acqua da Wells, motivo per cui trascorre la notte seguente in infermeria, per prevenir eventuali malanni: qui vi sogna la propria morte, assieme alle conseguenze che questa porterà agli altri, alla sua famiglia e conoscenti. 

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany (a moment where a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination) and the theme of paralysis (Joyce felt Irish nationalism stagnated cultural progression, placing Dublin at the heart of a regressive movement). The first three stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, while the subsequent stories are written in the third person and deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people, in line with Joyce's division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appeared in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses.

"Ulysses", novel by Irish writer James Joyce, first published in book form in 1922. Stylistically dense and exhilarating, it is generally regarded as a masterpiece and has been the subject of numerous volumes of commentary and analysis. The novel is constructed as a modern parallel to Homer’s "Odyssey".Unfolding in a single day—June 16, 1904—Joyce’s novel re-creates the Dublin, Ireland, of his youth, as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants. With its individual sections patterned after Homer’s "Odyssey", the novel centres on that day in the life of Leopold Bloom—a Jew whose roots are in Hungary. Joyce’s work was perhaps the most avant-garde of its time, but its most radical innovation is in the narrative format through which it unfolds. Informed by Sigmund Freud’s theories about the subconscious, Joyce utilises the stream of conscious technique to explore the innermost thoughts of his characters. It creates a polyphonic interplay of moods and impressions that were a radical departure from the work of Joyce’s contemporaries. In it the unconscious mind is uncensored, and it is often prone to dwell on bodily functions—a subject that was taboo in the polite society of the early twentieth century. Therein lay the root of the book’s censorship problems.

SOLIDARIETA" DIGITALE : tutto il nostro catalogo in promozione! Scritti da James Joyce nel 1906, ma pubblicati soltanto nel 1914, perché ritenuti da molti editori troppo audaci, i quindici racconti che costituiscono il volume "Gente di Dublino" sono considerati tra i capolavori della letteratura del Novecento. I protagonisti sono abitanti della città di Dublino, che vengono raffigurati nella loro quotidianità, e il tema che unisce tutti i racconti è la "morte in vita". I personaggi descritti da Joyce sono infatti frustrati, destinati a fallire o rinunciatari e l"ambiente in cui si svolgono le vicende è sempre squallido e desolato. Alcune volte un"improvvisa illuminazione o una rivelazione rendono palesi ai personaggi le misere condizioni in cui versano, ma per loro è sempre impossibile uscirne, perché vittime di una "paralisi morale". Le storie possono essere suddivise in quattro sezioni, che rappresentano le diverse fasi della vita umana: l"infanzia (Le sorelle, Un incontro, Arabia), l"adolescenza (Eveline, Dopo la corsa, I due galanti, Pensione di famiglia), la maturità (Una piccola nube, Rivalsa, Polvere, Un caso pietoso), la vecchiaia (Il giorno dell"Edera, Una madre, La grazia), a cui fa seguito il celebre racconto "I morti". Fa da sfondo a tutte le storie una Dublino grigia e malinconica, che diventa l"emblema delle città occidentali del secolo scorso e della loro decadenza morale.

"Ulysses" is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement." According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain. The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.