James Joyce was born in 1882 in Dublin into a middle class Catholic family. His father was a supporter of Charles Parnell, the leader of the movement for Home Rule for Ireland (to learn more about “the free State of Ireland” go to the end of this post). Joyce attended two Jesuit schools, then went on to study modern languages at University College in Dublin, where he graduated. Finding life in Ireland an obstacle to his own artistic development, in 1902 Joyce left Ireland in voluntary exile, living first in Paris, then to Pola in 1904 and, finally, in Trieste, where he wrote “Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the artist as a young man”. When World War I broke out, Joyce went to Zurich where he started working on “Ulysses”. In 1920 he moved to Paris where “Ulysses” was published and Joyce wrote his last novel “Finnegans Wake”. When France was occupied by the Germans in 1940, Joyce returned to Zurich, where he died in 1941. All of Joyce’s works are centred on Ireland and on the early 20th-c...

At the beginning of the 20th century intellectuals attitudes were changing and people found it difficult to believe in anything. First of all, an explosion of new ideas changed man’s view of himself and of the universe. In 1905 Albert Einstein published “Theory of Relativity” in which he dealt a further blow to the belief that objective reality and science as a substitute for religion could give an explanation of the universe. British writers were inspired by the philosophical ideas of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche who proclaimed existing abstract values such as the “good” and the “beautiful” were decadent. These ideas were incorrectly late linked with Nazism and Fascism. Another important influence on British artists came from Sigmund Freud and his theories on the structure and workings of the human mind, which are known as psychoanalysis, in order to treat hysteria and neurosis. Freud, then, explored new areas of sensibility which cae to be known as the unconscious. 20th century liter...

The Twenties and the Thirties of the XX century were characterised by the vote for women, the rise of the Labour Party, new living conditions, technological development and Great Depression. Following the support of women in factories during World War I , women represented by the Women's Suffrage Movement, headed by Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, claimed the right of vote. So in 1918 all men aged twenty-one and women over thirty were allowed to vote. Most of them were workers that increased the ranks of the Trade Unions and in 1924 the first Labour government was created. In this period the younger generation of the British upper class gradually abandoned the gentlemanly style of their ancestors and took on a loud and obsessive search for fun (Roaring Twenties). This change of lifestyle influenced the family: it became smaller, both parents worked and divorce became more common. During the first postwar, the telephone and electricity expanded on a large scale; the motion picture and radi...