James Joyce Revolutionized the Novel, the Short Story, and Modern Literature as We Know It.

Reading Passage Question

Question: James Joyce revolutionized the novel, the short story, and modern literature as we know it. He was born in Dublin, the first of 10 children in a Catholic family. His father was a civil servant whose poor financial judgment left the family impoverished for much of Joyce’s youth. Young James attended Dublin’s fine Jesuit schools, which gave him a firm grounding in theology and classical languages—subjects that appeared repeatedly in his later work. The story of his early life and his intellectual rebellion against Catholicism and Irish nationalism are told in the largely autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In 1902, at the age of 20, Joyce left Dublin to spend the rest of his life in Paris, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich, with only occasional visits back home. Despite this self-imposed exile, Dublin was the setting for most of his writings. Dubliners (1914), Joyce’s most accessible work, is a collection of short stories describing the paralyzing social mores of middle-class Catholic life. “The Dead,” the final story in the collection, is frequently listed as one of the finest short stories ever written.

Joyce’s next book, Ulysses, took seven years to write; once he finished writing it, he almost couldn’t find anyone to publish it. Upon the novel’s publication, both Ireland and the United States immediately banned it as obscene. Despite these obstacles, Ulysses has come to be generally recognized as the greatest twentieth-century novel written in English. The novel was revolutionary in many ways. The structure was unique: Joyce recreated one full day in the life of his protagonist, Leopold Bloom, and modeled the actions of the story on those of Ulysses in the Odyssey. In recounting Bloom’s day, Joyce mentions everything that happens to Bloom—including thoughts, bodily functions, and sexual acts—providing a level of physical actuality that had never before been achieved in literature. To provide a psychological insight comparable to the physical detail, Joyce employed a then-revolutionary technique called stream of consciousness,in which the protagonist’s thoughts are laid bare to the reader.

From 1922 until 1939, Joyce worked on a vast, experimental novel that eventually became known as Finnegan’s Wake. The novel, which recounts “the history of the world” through a family’s dreams, employs its own “night language” of puns, foreign words, and literary allusions. It has no clear chronology or plot, and it begins and ends on incomplete sentences that flow into each other. Many of Joyce’s supporters thought he was wasting his time on the project, although the playwright Samuel Beckett, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature, helped Joyce compile the final text when his eyesight was failing. Today, Finnegan’s Wake is viewed as Joyce’s most obscure and possibly most brilliant work.

“James Joyce revolutionized the novel, the short story, and modern literature as we know it.” is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates appearing for GMAT need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 7 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Question 1
Which of the following would make the most appropriate title for this passage?

1. The Long Way Home: Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake
2. James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Battle against Censorship
3. The Works of James Joyce, Ireland’s Literary Genius
4. The Hidden Value of James Joyce’s Great Novels
5. A Portrait of James Joyce as a Young Man

Question 2 
Based on the information in the passage, which of the following would be the most accurate statement about Dubliners and Finnegan’s Wake?

1. Dubliners contains one of the greatest short stories in the English language, and Finnegan’s Wake is the greatest story in the English language.
2. Many of the chief characters in Finnegan’s Wake were earlier introduced in Dubliners.
3. The linguistic experimentation of Dubliners paved the way for the “night language” of Finnegan’s Wake.
4. Dubliners is a longer book than Finnegan’s Wake.
5. Dubliners is a more accessible book than Finnegan’s Wake.

Question 3
Joyce’s works helped introduce all except which of the following literary elements into modern English literature?

1. Narration through second-person address
2. Novel structure based on real-time chronology
3. Linguistic experimentation
4. Literary realism concerning physical reality
5. Stream of consciousness

Question 4
According to the passage, in what year was Joyce born?

1. 1880
2. 1882
3. 1885
4. 1902
5. 1914

Question 5
The author most likely mentions James Joyce’s childhood, family, and education to serve what purpose?

1. To suggest that he had to write in order to make a living
2. To suggest that he became a writer because of his father’s influence
3. To provide the background and cultural context for his literary work
4. To provide evidence that his literary genius was present when he was a child
5. To explain his opposition to Catholicism and socialism in his later life

Question 6
Who is the most likely intended audience for this passage?

1. Insurance professionals at a company seminar
2. University professors of English literature at a symposium on twentieth-century Irish playwrights
3. High school students in Ireland studying their nation’s traditional folklore
4. College students studying twentieth-century English literature
5. Elementary school students studying the Odyssey

Question 7
Which of the following can be inferred about Joyce’s attitude toward Catholicism as practiced in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century?

1. He felt that it repressed intellectual freedom and individual expression.
2. He viewed it as the central component of the Irish national psyche.
3. He feared that it was impeding the Irish nationalist movement.
4. He felt that it forced him to leave Dublin for Paris, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich.
5. He believed that Dublin’s Jesuit schools provided the finest education in all of Ireland.

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