A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical kunstlerroman (an artist's bildungsroman) by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist between 1914-1915 and published in book form in 1916. It is the story of the growth and education of Stephen Dedalus, an alter ego for Joyce, named after the Grecian mythological craftsman Daedalus.
A Portrait is one of the key examples of the Künstlerroman 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 he has been brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. The work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Plot introduction
Portrait is a complete rewrite of his earlier attempt at the story, Stephen Hero, which he grew frustrated with 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 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 and finally journal entries by Stephen are introduced to mirror his alienation from society. 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. However, 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.Because of the first page of the novel, which is sui generis to the rest of the Portrait but very similar in style to Joyce's later novel Finnegans Wake, many have erroneously concluded that the Portrait as a whole is a stream of consciousness narrative along the lines of Beckett, Gertrude Stein, or Joyce's own Ulysses. This is not the case.
Allusions/references from other works
The title has been plagiarised and parodied by many writers including Charles Perry in "Portrait of a Young Man Drowning", Dylan Thomas in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Joseph Heller in A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts' A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man and in Grayson Perry's biography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
The book is set in Joyce's native Ireland, especially in Dublin. It deals with many Irish issues such as the quest for autonomy and the role of the Catholic church.Trivia
- The book was rejected when it was first submitted to a publisher. Edward Garnett, a highly distinguished critic of the time, wrote in a report to the publisher after reading the book:
The author shows us he has art, strength and originality, but this MS wants time and trouble spent on it, to make it a more finished piece of work, to shape it more carefully as the product of the craftmanship, mind and imagination of an artist.
Further reading
- Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1959, revised edition 1983.
- Burgess, Anthony. 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)
External links
- [Free eBook: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man] at Project Gutenberg
- [Searchable, self-referential edition of Portrait, with concordance]
- http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/portrait_artist_young_man/
- http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/29/62/frameset.html
- [link]"Sparknotes for Portrait"
| James Joyce |
|---|
| Novels:Stephen Hero | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Ulysses | Finnegans Wake Short Stories:Dubliners | Plays:Exiles | Poetry:Chamber Music | Pomes Penyeach |
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