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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

 
A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man



 
 
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical
Autobiography

An autobiography is a biography written by its subject . The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English language Periodical publication Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity....
 novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 by James Joyce
James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
, first serialized in The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)

The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 in poetry to 1919 in poetry, during which time it published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce and T....
 from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916
1916 in literature

The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books....
. It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus
Stephen Dedalus

Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, as well as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an important character in Joyce's monumental Ulysses ....
, a fictional alter ego
Alter ego

An alter ego is a 2 Self , a second Personality psychology or persona within a person. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when schizophrenia was first described by early psychologists....
 of Joyce and a pointed allusion
Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, mythology, or work of art, either directly or by implication....
 to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Daedalus
Daedalus

In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about....
.

A Portrait is a key example of the Künstlerroman
Künstlerroman

A K?nstlerroman is a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; it is a novel about an artist's growth to maturity. Such novels often depict the struggles of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time....
 (an artist's Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman

A bildungsroman is a novelistic genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a protagonist....
) in English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic
Catholic

Catholic is an adjective derived from the Greek language adjective , meaning "whole" or "complete". In the context of Christianity ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages....
 and Irish
Republic of Ireland

Ireland is an Island country in north-western Europe. The modern Sovereignty state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British on 3 May 1921....
 conventions he has been brought up in.






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Quotations


His mind, emptied of theory and courage, lapsed back into a listless peace.

Ch. 5

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

Ch. 5

— And thanks be to God, Johnny, said Mr Dedalus, that we lived so long and did so little harm.— But did so much good, Simon, said the little old man gravely. Thanks be to God we lived so long and did so much good.

Ch. 2

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Ch. 5

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

Ch. 5

It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.

Ch. 5





Encyclopedia


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical
Autobiography

An autobiography is a biography written by its subject . The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English language Periodical publication Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity....
 novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 by James Joyce
James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
, first serialized in The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)

The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 in poetry to 1919 in poetry, during which time it published early modernist works, including those of James Joyce and T....
 from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916
1916 in literature

The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books....
. It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus
Stephen Dedalus

Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, as well as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an important character in Joyce's monumental Ulysses ....
, a fictional alter ego
Alter ego

An alter ego is a 2 Self , a second Personality psychology or persona within a person. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when schizophrenia was first described by early psychologists....
 of Joyce and a pointed allusion
Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, mythology, or work of art, either directly or by implication....
 to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Daedalus
Daedalus

In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about....
.

A Portrait is a key example of the Künstlerroman
Künstlerroman

A K?nstlerroman is a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; it is a novel about an artist's growth to maturity. Such novels often depict the struggles of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time....
 (an artist's Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman

A bildungsroman is a novelistic genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a protagonist....
) in English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic
Catholic

Catholic is an adjective derived from the Greek language adjective , meaning "whole" or "complete". In the context of Christianity ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages....
 and Irish
Republic of Ireland

Ireland is an Island country in north-western Europe. The modern Sovereignty state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British on 3 May 1921....
 conventions he has been brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
 to pursue his calling as an artist. The work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition in Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris....
 and Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a work of Comic novel by Irish literature James Joyce, which is recognised for its difficulty for the reader and its experimental style....
.
The Modern Library
Modern Library

The Modern Library, a current division of Random House publishers, was founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. It was bought in 1925 by Bennett Cerf....
 ranked Portrait as the third greatest English-language novel of the twentieth century.

Portrait is a complete rewrite of his earlier attempt at the story, Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero

Stephen Hero is a posthumously-published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. Only a portion survives; the rest was burned by the author after a domestic dispute....
, with which he grew frustrated in 1905. Large portions of Stephen Hero found their way, sometimes nearly unchanged, into Portrait, but the tone was changed considerably in order to focus more exclusively on the perspective of Stephen Dedalus. For instance, several of his siblings made prominent appearances in the earlier novel, but are almost completely absent in Portrait. The incomplete
Unfinished work

An unfinished work is a creative work that has not been finished. Its creator might have chosen never to finish it, or have been prevented by circumstances outside of his or her control ....
 first draft of Stephen Hero was published posthumously in 1944.

Literary style

Stylistically, the novel is written as a third-person narrative with minimal dialogue, though towards the very end of the book dialogue-intensive scenes involving Dedalus and some of his friends, in which Dedalus posits his complex, Thomist aesthetic theory, and finally journal entries by Stephen, are introduced. Since the work covers Stephen's life from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandoning of Ireland as a young man, the style of the work progresses through each of its five chapters, with the complexity of language gradually increasing. The book's opening pages have famous examples of Stephen's thoughts and conscious experience when he is a child. Throughout the work, language and prose are used to portray indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist, and the subjective impact of the events of his life. Hence the fungible length of some scenes and chapters, where Joyce's intent was to capture the subjective experience through language, rather than to present the actual experience through prose narrative. The writing style is also notable for Joyce's omission of quotation marks; instead he replaced them with dashes.

Allusions in novel

The book is set in Joyce's native Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
, especially in Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
. It deals with many Irish issues such as the quest for autonomy
Home rule

Home rule refers to a demand that constituent parts of a state be given greater self-governance within the greater administrative purview of the central government....
 and the role of the Catholic church. A particular figure, who is also mentioned in Dubliners and Ulysses, and alluded to in Finnegans Wake, is the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish people Church of Ireland landowner, Irish Nationalism politician, Irish Land League agitator, Irish Home Rule bills Member of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party....
.

The myth of Daedalus and Icarus features prominently in the novel. In Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Daedalus is an architect and inventor who becomes trapped in a labyrinth
Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos....
 of his own construction. Later, he finds himself on an island and fashions wings of feathers and wax for his son (Icarus) and for himself, so that they can escape. As they fly away Icarus grows bolder and flies higher, until, finally, he flies too close to the sun, which causes the wax to melt. Icarus plummets to the sea. This myth echoes the central themes of the novel - refusal to follow the path of the father, individual rebellion and discovery, producing a work of art that entraps the artificer, or allows him to escape his past.

Stephen's name is an allusion to Saint Stephen
Saint Stephen

Saint Stephen , known as the Protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches....
, the first Christian martyr
Martyr

The term martyr is most commonly used today to describe an individual who sacrifices his or her life in order to further a cause or belief for many....
. Stephen Dedalus, like Saint Stephen
Saint Stephen

Saint Stephen , known as the Protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches....
, has conflicts with the established religion. The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy , written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature....
 is also echoed in the name Stephen gives his aunt - Dante
DANTE

DANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions....
. Dante is so-called because of the way 'The Auntie' sounds in her Cork accent. Ovid
Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
's Metamorphoses is referenced at the start with a quote saying, "Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes" Translation: "And he sets his mind to unknown arts"

Jamesjoyce Portrait1916

Allusions to novel

The title has been adapted and parodied by many writers including Charles Perry in "Portrait of a Young Man Drowning
Portrait of a Young Man Drowning

Portrait of a Young Man Drowning, published in 1962, is the only novel published by Charles Perry ....
", Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh people poet who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself....
 in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was an American satirical novelist, short story writer and playwright. He wrote the influential novel Catch-22 about American servicemen during World War II....
 in Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, A.M. Klein in his poem "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape," Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts' A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man, Grayson Perry's
Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry, , is an English people artist, known mainly for his ceramics vases and cross-dressing. He works in several media. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance, e.g., child abuse and sado-masochism....
 biography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl and William Eastlake's Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses. In Patrick White
Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian author who was widely regarded as a major English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays....
's novel The Solid Mandala
The Solid Mandala

The Solid Mandala, a novel by Australian author Patrick White, Nobel Prize in Literature winner of 1973, was published in 1966. It was White's seventh published novel, and details the story of two brothers, Waldo and Arthur Brown, with a focus upon the facets of their symbiotic relationship....
, Waldo Brown plans but fails to write a novel called Tiresias a Youngish Man, thereby parodying both Joyce's novel and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line Modernist poetry in English by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem ? its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of Narrator, Setting , its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and li...
.

In film


A low-key 1977 Joseph Strick
Joseph Strick

Joseph Strick is an United States Film director, producer and screenwriter. He learned film making when serving as a cameraman in the US Air Force in World War II....
 production of the book starred Bosco Hogan
Bosco Hogan

Bosco Hogan is an Irish actor of stage, screen and television.He is best-known as Dr. Michael Ryan on Ballykissangel. He appeared in a minor role in John Boorman's film Zardoz ....
 as Stephen Dedalus, TP McKenna as Simon Dedalus and included a famous cameo appearance by Sir John Gielgud as a priest-on-a-pulpit.

Further reading

General

  • Brown, Richard. James Joyce and Sexuality. Cambridge University Press, 1985.
  • Ellmann, Richard
    Richard Ellmann

    Richard Ellmann was a prominent USA/British people literary critic and biographer of Ireland writers such as James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats....
    . James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1959, revised edition 1983.
  • Burgess, Anthony
    Anthony Burgess

    John Burgess Wilson was an England author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic.His Utopian and dystopian fiction satire A Clockwork Orange, widely considered to be his magnum opus, is by far his most famous novel, and was adapted into a famous, if highly controversial, A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick....
    . Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965); also published as Re Joyce.
  • Burgess, Anthony. Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce (1973).
  • Fairhall, James. James Joyce and the Question of History. Cambridge University Press, 1995.


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  • Bloom, Harold. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. ISBN 1-55546-020-8.
  • Brady, Philip and James F. Carens, eds. Critical Essays on James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998. ISBN 978-0-7838-0035-6.
  • Cańadas, Ivan. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: James Joyce, the Myth of Icarus, and the Influence of Christopher Marlowe". Estudios Irlandeses 1 (2006): 16-22.
  • Doherty, Gerald. Pathologies of Desire: The Vicissitudes of the Self in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8204-9735-8.
  • Empric, Julienne H. The Woman in the Portrait: The Transforming Female in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-8937-0193-2.
  • Epstein, Edmund L. The Ordeal of Stephen Dedalus: The Conflict of Generations in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1971. ISBN 978-0-8093-0485-1 .
  • Harkness, Marguerite. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Voices of the Text. Boston: Twayne, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8057-8125-0.
  • Morris, William E. and Clifford A. Nault, eds. Portraits of an Artist: A Casebook on James Joyce's Portrait. New York: Odyssey, 1962.
  • Seed, David. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-3120-8426-4.
  • Thornton, Weldon. The Antimodernism of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994. ISBN 978-0-8156-2587-2.
  • Wollaeger, Mark A., ed. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A Casebook. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2003. ISBN 978-0-1951-5075-9.
  • Yoshida, Hiromi. Joyce & Jung: The "Four Stages of Eroticism" in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8204-6913-3.


External links

  • , a digitized copy of the first edition, first printing from Internet Archive
    Internet Archive

    The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive site of the World Wide Web....
    .