James Joyce - His Life and Work

James Joyce was born in Dublin, son of a talented but feckless father who is accurately described by Stephen Dedalus in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". The elder Joyce drifted steadily down the financial and sociale scale, his family moving from house to house, each one less genteel and more shary than the previous. James Joyce's whole education was Catholic.
From a comparatively early age Joyce regarded himself as a rebel against the shabbiness and Philistinism of Dublin. In his early youth he was very religious, but in his last year at Belvedere he began to reject his Catholic faith in favor a literary mission which he saw as involving rebellion and exile. By 1902, when he received his B.A. degree he was already committed to a career as exile and writer. …