James Joyce
Political views

Throughout his life, Joyce stayed actively interested in Irish national politics and in its relationship to British colonialism. He studied socialism and anarchism. He attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker 's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay " The Soul of Man Under Socialism ". He described his opinions as "those of a socialist artist". Joyce's direct engagement in politics was strongest during his time in Trieste, when he submitted newspaper articles, gave lectures, and wrote letters advocating for Ireland's independence from British rule. After leaving Trieste, Joyce's direct involvement in politics waned, but his later works still reflect his commitment. He remained sympathetic to individualism and critical of coercive ideologies such as nationalism. His novels address socialist, anarchist and Irish nationalist issues. Ulysses has been read as a novel critiquing the effect of British colonialism on the Irish people. Finnegans Wake has been read as a work that investigates the divisive issues of Irish politics, the interrelationship between colonialism and race, and the coercive oppression of nationalism and fascism.

Joyce's politics is reflected in his attitude toward his British passport. He wrote about the negative effects of British occupation in Ireland and was sympathetic to the attempts of the Irish to free themselves from it. In 1907, he expressed his support for the early Sinn Féin movement before the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, throughout his life, Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one. When he had a choice, he opted to renew his British passport in 1935 instead of obtaining one from the Irish Free State, and he chose to keep it in 1940 when accepting an Irish passport could have helped him to leave Vichy France more easily. His refusal to change his passport was partly due to the advantages that a British passport gave him internationally, his being out of sympathy with the violence of Irish politics, and his dismay over the Irish Free State's political alignment with the Catholic Church.
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