An Overall Analysis Of Joyce: On Joyce's Life In Exile And His Exiles

James Joyce is a great writer who is famous for exile in 20th century. From the beginning of 21st century to present, there is an upsurge of Joyce study in our country. But it's a pity that nearly all the criticisms in our country are concerned with James Joyce's novels and his drama Exiles is neglected. Taking into account of earlier research, the thesis focuses mainly on Exiles in the context of Joyce's exile and reveals its literary position. And the further intention is to discover the relationship between Joyce's life in exile and Exiles. The thesis covers mainly four aspects: the context of exile in 20th century; Joyce's spirit of exile; the spiritual world showed in Exiles; and the advantages of Joyce's cultural identity as an "outsider".The writing of writers in 20th century who were in exile is a distinguished phenomenon of literature. Some of the writers are compelled into exile while others were willing to do that. The works of those writers formed a metaphorical world of exile in which there are full of the feelings of bitterness, loneliness, separation and helplessness. This can be regarded as the historical background to Joyce's exile."Silence, cunning and exile" are the core of Joyce's spirit of exile which based on his inner motivation, and this spirit is built on his imitation but beyond his ancestors. Joyce endorses self-sacrifice spirit of Christ, admires rebellion of Byron, and prefers Dante's experience in exile. He has a certain self-exile spirit.Exiles was written when Joyce has been in exile for 9 years and it is an embodiment of Joyce's pain of being in exile to some extent. We can find the loneliness, the distorted mind of longing to be betrayed, and mental frustration coming from the rebellion of the character in the drama. It can be said that the drama is the autobiography of Joyce. Joyce himself confessed that he was an exile, which shows his consciousness of cultural identity as an "outsider". The drama reveals Richard Rowan's dilemma of neither belonging to Dublin nor accepting European culture. But the cultural identity as an "outsider" has its own advantage, it enables the writer to combine the experience of exile with his life and forms a unique angle of aesthetics.