James Joyce, English Teacher. Archival Explorations into Language Teaching in Early Twentieth-Century Europe

James Joyce lived for over a decade in Trieste, where he made his living as an English teacher first as a Berlitz school employee, then as a private instructor to wealthy students of the Triestine upper class, and finally as a teacher at the “Revoltella” Higher School for Business Studies. Previous studies on Joyce as a teacher have placed strong emphasis on the Berlitz experience and method, while evidence gleaned from recollections of Joyce’s contemporaries has tended to feed the myth of his unorthodox teaching style. Drawing on unpublished archival material, this book sets out to reconsider, and shed new light on, Joyce’s experience as a language teacher with the help of insights gained from primary sources. A second, equally important aim of this book is to situate Joyce’s teaching experience within a wider context and explore its possible connections with the European history of language learning and teaching.