Ulysses

Joyce was born into a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying; "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised Ulysses," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the had been taken from Homer.