Here's to Ireland's James Joyce, who lived abroad but returned to Dublin in his mind

For St. Patrick's Day, we take note of one of Ireland's greatest writers, James Joyce, whose experimental modernist novel, Ulysses, is considered one of the most important works in the movement. Joyce's character, Leopold Bloom, makes quite an epic day of it in Dublin in an adventure that cleverly mirrors Odysseus' travels in The Odyssey. Joyce spent most of his adult life living elsewhere, but his literary efforts drew on his native Dublin. Hoist one today for James Joyce.

Happy birthday, James Joyce!

It is the birthday of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (1882), whose pioneering work,  Ulysses (1922), stands as a landmark in Modernist literature and is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. Joyce's signature stream-of-consciousness technique permeates the work as it does his Finnegans Wake (1939), considered to be his masterpiece. Joyce's works are set in Dublin, his birthplace. Joyce believed that if he could get to the heart of Dublin he could get to the heart of all the world's cities. "In the particular is contained the universal," he said.