Although University College was known as a Jesuit institution, the emphasis on religious instruction had recently been deemphasized in order to please the emerging taste for the classics. This emphasis on humanistic studies, coupled with Joyce's mature changes in temperament, enabled him to depart from religious study almost entirely; he preferred to pursue a growing interest in the myths which Wagner used for his operas. He was also fascinated by the dramas of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
This latter interest was not shared by the conservative members of the faculty. In fact, Joyce received considerable criticism for an essay which he delivered before the college's Literary and Historical Society, denouncing Greek and Shakespearean drama in favor of the works of more modern playwrights, such as Ibsen. Undaunted by the attacks on his aesthetic opinions, Joyce further asserted himself by revising his presentation into an essay entitled "Ibsen’s New Drama," which appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900.
Throughout the remainder of Joyce's university years, he continued to take issue with popular artistic tastes. Intolerant of the emerging Irish Theater Movement, which he believed was producing offensive provincial dramas, he wrote a scathing article, "The Day of the Rabblement," in which he encouraged people to reject the paltry works of Irish dramatists and explore the works of great beauty and truth which were being produced by new European writers.
Joyce departed from University College on December 1, 1902, and traveled to Paris, where he hoped to begin a medical career and continue his writing. He soon fell behind in his studies and fell even further behind in his finances. Luckily, some of these pressures were alleviated with the help of a recent acquaintance, Lady Augusta Gregory, and a fortuitous friendship with William Butler Yeats. Both Gregory and Yeats provided Joyce with encouragement and contacts which enabled him to write reviews for Dublin's Daily Express.
Originally, Joyce had hoped to stay in Paris for several years, but in April 1903, his father sent him an urgent cable concerning Joyce's mother's failing health. Joyce returned to Dublin and learned that his mother had been diagnosed as dying of cirrhosis of the liver; ironically, Joyce began spending most of his time drinking and carousing with medical students. His mother finally succumbed to cancer on August 13, 1903; she was forty-four.
