Stephen Dedalus is
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is 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...
's literary
alter egoAn alter ego is a second self, a second personality or persona within a person. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when schizophrenia was first described by early psychologists...
, as well as the
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916...
and an important character in Joyce's monumental
UlyssesUlysses 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...
. A number of critics, such as
Harold BloomHarold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, currently Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University...
, have named a younger Stephen as the narrator of the first three stories in
DublinersDubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. The fifteen stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century....
.
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:*...
, an early version of what became
Portrait, we find the surname written as "Daedalus," a more precise allusion to
DaedalusIn Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful architect, or artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about. Daedalus had two sons: Icarus and Iapyx, along with a nephew, whose name varies...
, the Greek mythological architect, contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would then imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. (as Buck Mulligan puts it in
Ulysses, "Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!") Upon significantly revising the mammoth
Stephen Hero text into the much more compact
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916...
, Joyce opted to shorten the name to "Dedalus".
Stephen Dedalus also appears in
Ulysses as a parallel to
TelemachusTelemachus is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey...
and, less overtly, Hamlet. He is the protagonist of the three preliminary chapters of that work, before
Leopold BloomLeopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and antihero of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, assuming the role of the 'Odysseus' character. Like the Greek hero in The Odyssey, he is absent at the beginning of the story, and does not feature until episode four of the novel...
is introduced, and his interactions with that character and his wife, Molly, form much of the final chapters' substance. As his mythological namesake, Daedalus (or Daidalus in the Greek pronounciation and transliteration) who according to Ovid's Metamorphoses (VIII:183-235) was shut up in a tower to prevent his knowledge of the labyrinth from spreading to the public, Stephen opens the modern Odyssey on July 16th, 1904 in Dubin and while taking breakfast in the
SandycoveSandycove is a small village located on the east coast of Ireland, in South County Dublin, and more specifically, in the local authority area of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown...
Martello towerMartello towers are small defensive forts built in several countries of the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards....
where he has been staying, Stephen spreads his opinions of religion especially as resulting from the recent death of his mother with his quasi-friend Buck Mulligan, who manages to offend Stephen before making plans to go drinking later that evening as they part ways. After teaching a history lesson on ancient Rome, the "Proteus" (the Greek Mythological prophetic old man of the sea and the shepherd of sea animals such as seals who knew all things past, present, and future but disliked telling what he knew)chapter finds Stephen ambling about the strand as both his pertinent and stray thoughts are related in the form of an interior monologue. After the intermission of many chapters concerning Bloom, Stephen returns to the fore of the novel in the library episode, in which he expounds at length to some acquaintances his theory of the obscurely autobiographical nature of Shakespeare's works and questions the institution of fatherhood, deeming it to be a fiction. He discredits his own ideas afterward, although this is perhaps illustrating his lack of self-confidence.
As a character, Stephen seems to parallel many facets of Joyce's life and personality. Stephen's first name comes from
the first Christian martyrSaint Stephen , known as the Protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Stephen means "wreath" or "crown" in Greek...
and, in
juxtapositionJuxtaposition may refer to:* Juxtaposition , synonymous with contrast, two objects or texts that oppose one another* Random juxtaposition, two random objects moving in parallel, a technique intended to stimulate creativity...
, his surname refers to the mythological figure
DaedalusIn Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful architect, or artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about. Daedalus had two sons: Icarus and Iapyx, along with a nephew, whose name varies...
, a brilliant artificer who constructed a pair of wings for himself and his son
IcarusIcarus is a character in Greek mythology. He is the son of Daedalus and is commonly known for his attempt to escape Crete by flight, which ended in a fall to his death.-Escape from Crete:...
as a means of escaping the island of Crete, where they were imprisoned by King Minos (who contracted Daedalus to build 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. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull and was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus...
to contain the
MinotaurIn Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Ovid, "part man and part bull." He dwelt at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction built for King Minos of Crete...
). Some critics suggest that Stephen's surname also reflects the labyrinthine quality of Stephen's developmental journey in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The choice to use the name Dedalus also represents Stephen's wish to "fly" away from the constraints of religion, nationality, and politics which he feels hold him back artistically.
Quotations
You speak to me of language, nationality, religion...I shall try to fly by those nets.
- —A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, chapter 5
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
- —Ulysses, episode 9
Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
- —A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
- —Ulysses, episode 2
I fear those big words that make us so unhappy.
- —Ulysses, episode 2