A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and a pointed allusion to the consummate craftsman of ree! mythology, Daedalus" A Portrait is a !ey e#ample of the $%nstlerroman &an artist's bildungsroman( in )nglish literature" Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical a*a!ening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to +uestion and rebel against the ,atholic and Irish conventions he has been brought up in" -e finally leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist" .he *or! pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techni+ues that *ould later come to fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. .he Modern /ibrary ran!ed Portrait as the third greatest )nglish-language novel of the t*entieth century" Stylistically, the novel is *ritten as a third-person narrative *ith minimal dialogue, though to*ards the very end of the boo! dialogue-intensive scenes and finally 0ournal entries by Stephen are introduced to mirror his alienation from society" Since the *or! covers Stephen's life from the time he *as a child to his gro*ing independence and ultimate abandoning of Ireland as a young man, the style of the *or! progresses through each of its five chapters, *ith the comple#ity of language gradually increasing" -o*ever, throughout the *or!, language and prose are used to portray indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist, and the sub0ective impact of the events of his life" -ence the fungible length of some scenes and chapters, *here Joyce's intent *as to capture the sub0ective e#perience through language, rather than to present the actual e#perience through prose narrative" 1ecause of the first page of the novel, *hich is sui generis to the rest of the Portrait but very similar in style to Joyce's later novel Finnegans Wake, a reader may erroneously conclude that the Portrait as a *hole is a stream of consciousness narrative along the lines of 1ec!ett, ertrude Stein, or Joyce's o*n Ulysses" .his is not the case"

Allusions to history and geography

.he boo! is set in Joyce's native Ireland, especially in Dublin" It deals *ith many Irish issues such as the +uest for autonomy and the role of the ,atholic church" A particular figure, *ho is also mentioned in Dubliners and Ulysses, and alluded to in Finnegans Wake, is the Irish leader ,harles Ste*art Parnell"

Allusions to other works

.he myth of Daedalus and Icarus features prominently in the novel" In ree! myth, Daedalus *as an architect and inventor *ho almost becomes trapped in a labyrinth of his o*n construction" -e later escapes and fashions *ings of feathers and *a# for his son and himself to escape the island they are on" As they fly a*ay Icarus gro*s bolder and flies higher, until finally he flies too close to the sun, *hich causes the *a# to melt, and he plummets into the sea" .his myth echoes the central themes of the novel - refusal to follo* the path of the father, individual rebellion and discovery, producing a *or! of art that entraps the artificer, or allo*s him to escape his past" Stephen's name is an allusion to Saint Stephen, the first ,hristian martyr" Stephen Dedalus, li!e Saint Stephen, has conflicts *ith the established religion" .he Divine ,omedy is also echoed in the name Stephen gives his aunt Dante" Dante is so-called because of the *ay '.he Auntie' sounds in her ,or! accent"2vid's Metamorphoses is referenced at the start *ith a +uote saying, 3)t ignotas animum dimittit in artes3 .ranslation4 3And he sets his mind to un!no*n arts3