James Joyce (1882-1941) is a recognized master of stream-of-consciousness novels in the West and represents the pinnacle of British modernist novels.

Joyce was born in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, where he spent his teenage years. He left Ireland in 1912 and never returned. Joyce did not write many works in his life, but 6: a play, a collection of poems, a collection of short stories "Dubliners" (1914), a novella "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and two novels, Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). However, all of these works were written about Ireland. He once said, "My purpose is to write a spiritual history for my motherland. I chose Dublin as the background because I think this city is the center of paralysis..." This is how Joyce spent his life's energy and used time to and consciousness as the core, using what he calls "a style of scrupulous meanness" to truly reproduce the spiritual life of the Irish people, thereby profoundly revealing the problems and crises faced by an entire era.

As mentioned above, Joyce did not have many works in his lifetime, and most of them are obscure and difficult to understand (it is said that the book "Finnegan's Wake" can only be obtained by scholars who specialize in Joyce with the help of specialized vocabulary) You can only read it with a watch). During his lifetime, he was still a writer who caused heated debates and received various criticisms and criticisms. However, in the more than half a century after his death, studies on Joyce and his works have emerged from all over the world. Someone has calculated that these research books are enough to fill a library. Why is Joyce so influential? This is mainly due to his superb stream-of-consciousness techniques and his bold experiments and reforms in the layout and narrative form of the novel. From "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" to the kaleidoscopic stream-of-consciousness masterpiece "Ulysses" to the hazy and obscure dream novel "Finnegan's Wake", Joyce's works have almost exhausted all the novels of the 20th century. Expressive art. Therefore, we say that Joyce pioneered a new generation of literary creation, and he deserves it.