The most famous of all Irish writers must be James Joyce, the template for modern literature. The deceptive simplicity of Dubliners has become a literary model, and his stream-of-consciousness in Ulysses launched a new literary genre in 1921 when it was first published in serial form in The Little Review.
Joyce is also an exemplar for many Irish writers, too, in his complex relationship with both Irishness and Catholicity. Joyce renounced his childhood faith (and he didn’t have much time for Irish nationalism either); and Ireland, to some extent, renounced him, initially – especially when Ulysses, banned in Britain and America, attracted charges of obscenity. The Jesuits who educated Joyce did not claim their alumnus.
