James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 - January 13, 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. He is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters. Joyce was born into a middle-class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris, and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. In 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While he at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He died a few days later at the age of 58.