A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, first serialised in the magazine
The EgoistThe Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos," and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses...
from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in
1916The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter Godwin Woodson, the father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week."...
by
B. W. HuebschB. W. Huebsch was an American publisher settled in New York in the early 20th century. He was the first publisher in the United States of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. He also published, in 1919, the first edition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio . In 1925 he merged his firm with Viking...
, New York. The first English edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917. The story describes the formative years of the life of
Stephen DedalusStephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing 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 Ulysses...
, a fictional
alter egoAn alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
of Joyce and an
allusionAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to the consummate craftsman of
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
,
DaedalusIn Greek mythology, Daedalus was a skillful craftsman and artisan.-Family:...
.
— 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
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
Ch. 4
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
Ch. 4
It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture.
Ch. 5
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
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
Ch. 5
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.
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
His mind, emptied of theory and courage, lapsed back into a listless peace.
Ch. 5
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, first serialised in the magazine
The EgoistThe Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos," and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses...
from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in
1916The year 1916 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter Godwin Woodson, the father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week."...
by
B. W. HuebschB. W. Huebsch was an American publisher settled in New York in the early 20th century. He was the first publisher in the United States of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. He also published, in 1919, the first edition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio . In 1925 he merged his firm with Viking...
, New York. The first English edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917. The story describes the formative years of the life of
Stephen DedalusStephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing 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 Ulysses...
, a fictional
alter egoAn alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
of Joyce and an
allusionAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to the consummate craftsman of
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
,
DaedalusIn Greek mythology, Daedalus was a skillful craftsman and artisan.-Family:...
.
A novel written in Joyce's characteristic
free indirect speechFree indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech...
style,
A Portrait is a major example of the
KünstlerromanA Künstlerroman , meaning "artist's novel" in German, is a narrative about an artist's growth to maturity. It may be classified as a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; such a work, usually a novel, tends to depict the conflicts of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his...
(an artist's
BildungsromanIn literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
) 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 and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by
UlyssesUlysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
and
Finnegans WakeFinnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world", was ranked by
Modern LibraryThe Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.
Composition
Portrait is a rewrite of Joyce's earlier attempt at the story as written in
Stephen HeroStephen Hero is a posthumously-published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. Its published form reflects only a portion of an original manuscript, part of which was lost. Many of its ideas were used in composing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.-External links:*...
, with which he grew frustrated in 1905. The story was changed considerably to emphasize the psychological experience of Stephen Dedalus. For instance, several of his siblings were major characters of the earlier version, but are almost completely absent in
Portrait. The incomplete 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 describes Stephen's life from the time he was a child to his increasing independence and ultimate abandonment 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 examples of Stephen's thoughts and conscious experience when he is a child. Throughout the work, language and prose are used to describe indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist, and the subjective effect 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 by prose narrative. The writing style is notable also for Joyce's omission of quotation marks; he indicated dialogue by beginning a paragraph with a dash, as is commonly used by French publications. The novel, like all of Joyce's published works, is not dedicated to anyone.
Allusions in novel
The book is set in Joyce's native Ireland, partly in
Dublin. It deals with various Irish issues of the time such as the quest for
autonomyHome rule is the power of a constituent part of a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been devolved to it by the central government....
and the role of the Catholic Church. A particular personage, who is also mentioned in
Dubliners and
Ulysses, and alluded to in
Finnegans Wake, is the Irish politician
Charles Stewart ParnellCharles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
.
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus features prominently in the novel. In
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Daedalus is an architect and inventor who becomes trapped in a
labyrinthIn 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 and Icarus to fall into the sea.
Stephen's name is an allusion to
Saint StephenSaint Stephen The Protomartyr , the protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches....
, the first Christian
martyrA martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
. Stephen Dedalus, like
Saint StephenSaint Stephen The Protomartyr , the protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches....
, has conflicts with the established religion.
The Divine ComedyThe Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work 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 is so-called because of the way 'The Auntie' sounds with her Cork accent. The epigraph is from
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's
Metamorphoses,
Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes ("And he sets his mind to unknown arts").
Allusions to the novel
The title has been adapted and parodied by many writers including
Dylan ThomasDylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. 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,
Ogden NashFrederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
in his poem
Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man,
Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US 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'sGrayson Perry is an English artist, known mainly for his ceramic vases and cross-dressing. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of...
biography
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, punk band
Dillinger Four'sDillinger Four is an American punk rock band formed in 1994 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They have released four full-length studio albums. The current band members are Patrick Costello on bass guitar and vocals, Erik Funk and Bill Morrisette on guitars and vocals, and Lane Pederson on drums.- Studio...
song
Portrait of the Artist as a Fucking AssholeMidwestern Songs of the Americas is an album released by the punk rock band Dillinger Four.-Track listing:# "O.K. F.M. D.O.A." – 3:10# "#51 Dick Butkus" – 2:24# "It's a Fine Line Between the Monkey and the Robot" – 2:18...
, and William Eastlake's
Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses. In
Patrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
's novel
The Solid MandalaThe Solid Mandala, the seventh published novel by Australian author Patrick White, Nobel Prize winner of 1973, first published in 1966. It 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. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
. Also the song
Portrait Of The Artist As A Fountain by Simon Bookish.
Steve BoyettSteven R. Boyett, also known as DJ Steve Boyett, is a writer and disc jockey based in Northern California.-Early work:Boyett sold his first novel, Ariel, at the age of 21, and went on to publish The Architect of Sleep, The Gnole , Elegy Beach , as well as numerous short stories and novellas...
's short story collection
Treks Not Taken includes a
Star Trek: The Next GenerationStar Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
parody entitled
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan.
King of the Hill parodied the novel with an episode entitled
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clown.
In film
A film version, adapted for cinema by Judith Rascoe and directed by
Joseph StrickJoseph Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strick briefly attended UCLA before enrolling in the Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach...
, was released in 1977. It featured
Bosco HoganBosco 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 as convicted felon George Saden in John Boorman's film Zardoz , but his first major film role was as Stephen Dedalus in the 1977 Joseph Strick film...
as Stephen Dedalus and TP McKenna as Simon Dedalus, and featured
John GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
as the priest whose lengthy sermon on Hell terrifies the teenage Stephen.
Further reading
- Attridge, Derek
Derek Attridge FBA is a British academic in the field of English literature and the current Professor of English at the University of York; a post he has held since 2003.-Education:...
, ed. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, 2nd edition, Cambridge UP, 2004. ISBN 0-521-54553-6.
- Bloom, Harold
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
. 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.
- Cañadas, Ivan. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: James Joyce, the Myth of Icarus, and the Influence of Christopher Marlowe", Estudios Irlandeses: Electronic Journal of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI) 1 (2006), pp.16-22. Online:
- 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 978-0-89370-193-2.
- 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 978-0-312-08426-4.
- 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 978-0-19-515075-9.
- 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
-
- Digitized copy of the first edition from Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Study guide from SparkNotes
SparkNotes, originally part of a website called The Spark, is a company started by Harvard students Sam Yagan, Max Krohn, Chris Coyne, and Eli Bolotin in 1999 that originally provided study guides for literature, poetry, history, film, and philosophy...