Abstract: Joyce had not written any autobiography, but his own experience was interwoven in most of his fictions. His real experience and the literary invention are combined in his novels, to demonstrate yet the fabrication in and the allegorical nature of his works. This results not only from his self-concentration, but also from his aesthetic idea. With those self-parody and multiple personality, Joyce questioned the reliability of the traditional biographies, including autobiographies and made a postmodern semi-biography in Finnegans Wake. Therefore Joyce brought the autobiography from the romantic hero to the postmodern self-decomposition.

Key Words: James Joyce; Autobiography; Postmodernism

Dai Congrong is professor and vice dean of Faculty of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University. She is specialized in comparative Literature and world literature.  Her recent publications include James Joyce, Edward Said and Other Diasporic Intellectuals (2012), The Book of Freedom: Reading Finnegans Wake (2007), The Form Experiments in James Joyce’s Texts (2005).