Joyce in England

James Joyce’s love-hate relationship with England needs to examined more fully. The country was the oppressor of Ireland and, at the same time, through its language, an avenue of escape for the young Joyce from the claustrophobia of provincial Ireland and the narrow constraints of the Catholic religion. His love of English literature, especially that by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and William Blake, and of the English music hall and its seaside resorts, was deeply embedded in Joyce, and his work is shot through with traces of these youthful passions. All of these aspects of Joyce’s life are worth some degree of scholarly examination.