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A PORTAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

Introduction

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depicts events which closely correspond with

those of Joyce's first twenty years. According to Joyce's celebrated biographer, Richard

Ellman, Joyce hoped that his Portrait would be an autobiographical novel, "turning his life

into fiction." While scholars disagree on the extent to which Joyce's life affected his fictional

narrative in the novel, most of them concur that Stephen Dedalus is both the protagonist of

the novel, as well as the person behind which Joyce paints his fictional "portrait" of the

"artist" and of the "young man."

Author

One of the most influential and innovative writers of the 20th century, James Joyce is

the author of the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the novels A Portrait of the Artist

as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939). His collections of

poetry include Chamber Music (1907) and Pomes Penyeach (1927).

Joyce’s first published book was Chamber Music, a collection of 36 love poems. His

poetry was noticed by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and included in Pound’s influential Imagist

Anthology of 1914. Pound wrote of Chamber Music: “the quality and distinction of the

poems in the first half … is due in part to their author’s strict musical training … the wording

is Elizabethan, the metres at times suggesting Herrick.” Known as a lyric poet, Joyce based

some of his poems on songs. His poems have been set to music by composers including

Geoffrey Moyneux Palmer, Ross Lee Finney, Samuel Barber, and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd,

as well as the group Sonic Youth. Despite his poetic success, Joyce is better known as a

novelist, and by 1932 he had stopped writing poetry altogether.

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Kunstlerroman and Bildungsroman

A bildungsroman is identified as a coming-of-age story, which might be any type of

narrative that follows the process of maturing of a central character. A Kunstlerroman is even

more specific, as it follows the artistic development of a writer, musician, or visual artist. The

German term ‘kunstlerroman’ which translates itself into ‘artist-novel’.

It is difficult to put James Joyce´s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man under

a single genre. While some scholars as Parrinder (72) express their nature as a formation,

personal development or coming-of-age novel and typify it as a Bildungsroman novel; other

as Levin (47) classify it in the Künstlerroman genre, and others highlight its biographical

nature or, even more specifically, denominate it a pseudo-autobiography.

Summary

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy

growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off

all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. As

a young boy, Stephen's Catholic faith and Irish nationality heavily influence him. He attends a

strict religious boarding school called Clongowes Wood College. At first, Stephen is lonely

and homesick at the school, but as time passes, he finds his place among the other boys. He

enjoys his visits home, even though family tensions run high after the death of the Irish

political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. This sensitive subject becomes the topic of a furious,

politically charged argument over the family's Christmas dinner.

Stephen's father, Simon, is inept with money, and the family sinks deeper and deeper

into debt. After a summer spent in the company of his Uncle Charles, Stephen learns that the
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family cannot afford to send him back to Clongowes, and that they will instead move to

Dublin. Stephen starts attending a prestigious day school called Belvedere, where he grows to

excel as a writer and as an actor in the student theater. His first sexual experience, with a

young Dublin prostitute, unleashes a storm of guilt and shame in Stephen, as he tries to

reconcile his physical desires with the stern Catholic morality of his surroundings. For a

while, he ignores his religious upbringing, throwing himself with debauched abandon into a

variety of sins—masturbation, gluttony, and more visits to prostitutes, among others. Then,

on a three-day religious retreat, Stephen hears a trio of fiery sermons about sin, judgment, and

hell. Deeply shaken, the young man resolves to rededicate himself to a life of Christian piety.

Stephen begins attending Mass every day, becoming a model of Catholic piety,

abstinence, and self-denial. His religious devotion is so pronounced that the director of his

school asks him to consider entering the priesthood. After briefly considering the offer,

Stephen realizes that the austerity of the priestly life is utterly incompatible with his love for

sensual beauty. That day, Stephen learns from his sister that the family will be moving, once

again for financial reasons. Anxiously awaiting news about his acceptance to the university,

Stephen goes for a walk on the beach, where he observes a young girl wading in the tide. He

is struck by her beauty, and realizes, in a moment of epiphany, that the love and desire of

beauty should not be a source of shame. Stephen resolves to live his life to the fullest, and

vows not to be constrained by the boundaries of his family, his nation, and his religion.

Stephen moves on to the university, where he develops a number of strong

friendships, and is especially close with a young man named Cranly. In a series of

conversations with his companions, Stephen works to formulate his theories about art. While

he is dependent on his friends as listeners, he is also determined to create an independent

existence, liberated from the expectations of friends and family. He becomes more and more

determined to free himself from all limiting pressures, and eventually decides to leave Ireland
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to escape them. Like his namesake, the mythical Daedalus, Stephen hopes to build himself

wings on which he can fly above all obstacles and achieve a life as an artist. especially close

with a young man named Cranly. In a series of conversations with his companions, Stephen

works to formulate his theories about art.

Character sketch

Stephen Dedalus

Modelled after Joyce himself, Stephen is a sensitive, thoughtful boy who reappears in

Joyce's later masterpiece, Ulysses. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though

Stephen's large family runs into deepening financial difficulties, his parents manage to send

him to prestigious schools and eventually to a university. As he grows up, Stephen grapples

with his nationality, religion, family, and morality, and finally decides to reject all socially

imposed bonds and instead live freely as an artist. Stephen undergoes several crucial

transformations over the course of the novel. The first, which occurs during his first years as

Clongowes, is from a sheltered little boy to a bright student who understands social

interactions and can begin to make sense of the world around him. The second, which occurs

when Stephen sleeps with the Dublin prostitute, is from innocence to debauchery. The third,

which occurs when Stephen hears Father Arnall's speech on death and hell, is from an

unrepentant sinner to a devout Catholic. Finally, Stephen's greatest transformation is from

near fanatical religiousness to a new devotion to art and beauty. This transition takes place in

Chapter 4, when he is offered entry to the Jesuit order but refuses it in order to attend

university. Stephen's refusal and his subsequent epiphany on the beach mark his transition

from belief in God to belief in aesthetic beauty.

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Simon Dedalus

Simon Dedalus spends a great deal of his time reliving past experiences, lost in his

own sentimental nostalgia. Joyce often uses Simon to symbolize the bonds and burdens that

Stephen's family and nationality place upon him as he grows up. Simon is a nostalgic, tragic

figure: he has a deep pride in tradition, but he is unable to keep his own affairs in order. To

Stephen, his father Simon represents the parts of family, nation, and tradition that hold him

back, and against which he feels he must rebel. The closest look we get at Simon is on the

visit to Cork with Stephen, during which Simon gets drunk and sentimentalizes about his

past. Joyce paints a picture of a man who has ruined himself and, instead of facing his

problems, drowns them in alcohol and nostalgia.

Emma Clery

Emma is Stephen's "beloved," the young girl to whom he is intensely attracted over

the course of many years. Stephen does not know Emma particularly well, and is generally

too embarrassed or afraid to talk to her, but feels a powerful response stirring within him

whenever he sees her. Stephen's first poem, "To E— C—," is written to Emma. She is a

shadowy figure throughout the novel, and we know almost nothing about her even at the

novel's end. For Stephen, Emma symbolizes one end of a spectrum of femininity. Stephen

seems able to perceive only the extremes of this spectrum: for him, women are either pure,

distant, and unapproachable, like Emma, or impure, sexual, and common, like the prostitutes

he visits during his time at Belvedere.

Parnell

Parnell is not fictional, and does not actually appear as a character in the novel.

However, as an Irish political leader, he is a polarizing figure whose death influences many

characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. During the late nineteenth century,
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Parnell had been the powerful leader of the Irish National Party, and his influence seemed to

promise Irish independence from England. When Parnell's affair with a married woman was

exposed, however, he was condemned by the Catholic Church and fell from grace. His

fevered attempts to regain his former position of influence contributed to his death from

exhaustion. Many people in Ireland, such as the character of John Casey in Joyce's novel,

considered Parnell a hero and blamed the church for his death. Many others, such as the

character Dante, thought the church had done the right thing to condemn Parnell. These

disputes over Parnell's character are at the root of the bitter and abusive argument that erupts

during the Dedalus family's Christmas dinner when Stephen is still a young boy. In this sense,

Parnell represents the burden of Irish nationality that Stephen comes to believe is preventing

him from realizing himself as an artist.

Cranly

Stephen's best friend at the university, Cranly also acts as a kind of nonreligious

confessor for Stephen. In long, late-night talks, Stephen tells Cranly everything, just as he

used to tell the priests everything during his days of religious fervor. While Cranly is a good

friend to Stephen, he does not understand Stephen's need for absolute freedom. Indeed, to

Cranly, leaving behind all the trappings of society would be terribly lonely. It is this

difference that separates the true artist, Stephen, from the artist's friend, Cranly. In that sense,

Cranly represents the a young man who is not called to be great as Stephen is, and who

therefore does not have to make the same sacrifices.

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As a kunstlerroman novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man presents the Bildungsroman characteristics,

especially in the first chapters, in which the novel revolves around a clear protagonist,

focusing in tracking the personal growth of Stephen Dedalus until when he builds his own

self-awareness and becomes owner of his own destiny. In this process of coming-of-age,

formal education plays an important role but even more important are his religious, social and

sexual experiences in his personal growing.

But from a point, when Stephen realises that his religious vocation has been replaced

by something else in the fourth chapter, the text starts to be more concerned of the appearance

of the Stephen artist. As the narrative progresses, Bildungsroman genre starts to weaken and

is relieved by the Künstlerroman, focusing in aspects as the commitment of the artist, or his

isolation from society.

In this way we could also describe this novel as the narration of a religious vocation

transformed into an artistic vocation, the story of a lost faith, of abandoned beliefs, of a child

who wants to believe in the God that adults show him, but when he becomes man, he will

forever deny that will, to transpose all his faith into another very different divinity, that of art.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man shares this autobiographical, real-life based

aspect with Joyce’s short story collection, Dubliners. In fact, one reason that Dubliners was

not published until 1914 (several years after it was written) was concern over libel laws. Its

stories contained characters and events that were alarmingly like real people and places,

raising concerns about libel. Suggestive details about real people—coupled with the book’s

historical and geographical precision and piercing examination of relationships—flustered

anxious publishers.
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There are parallels between A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Joyce’s best-

known work, Ulysses (1922), as well. One is that Stephen Dedalus figures prominently in the

opening chapters of Ulysses as well. In Ulysses, Joyce made extensive and convincing use of

his signature stream-of-consciousness prose style, which mirrors characters’ thoughts without

the limitations of traditional narrative. The technique is used in A Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man too, mostly during the opening sections and in Chapter 5.

Historical context

In addition to drawing heavily on Joyce’s personal life, A Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man also makes numerous references to the politics and religion of Ireland from

around 1880 until 1922 when the Irish War of Independence resulted the formation of the

Irish Free State (Ireland except for six mostly Protestant counties in the north). When Joyce

was growing up, Ireland had been under British rule since the 16th century, and tensions

between Ireland and Britain had been especially high since the potato famine of the 1840s

that led to Ireland’s population being decimated by disease and immigration to the United

States, Australia, England, and elsewhere. In addition to political strife, there was

considerable religious tension: the majority of Irish, including the Joyces, were Catholics, and

strongly favored Irish independence. The Protestant minority that was heavily concentrated in

the north of the country, on the other hand, mostly wished to remain united with Britain.

Around the time Joyce was born, the Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-

1891) was spearheading the movement for Irish self-governance as a Member of Parliament

in London. Parnell’s popularity with the Irish, both at home and abroad, led him to be

proclaimed “the uncrowned king of Ireland.” In 1890, however, Parnell’s longstanding affair

with a married woman was exposed, leading the Catholic Church to condemn Parnell

(himself a Protestant) and causing many of his former followers to turn against him. Many
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Irish nationalists blamed Parnell’s subsequent death on the Catholic Church. Indeed, we see

these strong opinions about Parnell surface in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man during

an emotional Christmas dinner argument among members of the Dedalus family.

By 1900, after many years of Irish Home Rule bills being stalled in the British Parliament,

the majority Irish people felt largely united in demanding freedom from British rule. In A

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen's friends at University College

frequently confront him with political questions about this struggle between Ireland and

England.
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Conclusion
After analysing the novel, we could see how the life events and the circumstances

play a vital role in shaping or exploring the inner artist in person. When it comes to Stephen,

his urge to appreciate or acknowledge the beauty or aesthetics. In the earlier stage of his life,

he finds this act of appreciating beauty as a sin and feels guilty for having sexual pleasures,

but later he decides to accept himself and pursue his career as an artist. Even the modern

artists face these issues while choosing their profession which is very contradictory to their

cultural upbringing. The Netflix production ‘Annapoorna’ cites this dilemma who a girl who

wishes to acquire the profession a chef is put under a dilemma to choose between her

profession and her family and their beliefs. When Stephen feels guilty for choosing his

aesthetics over God, Annapoorna has to leave her family to attain success.
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Citations
Annapoorani. Directed by Nilesh Krishna, Zee Studios , Trident Arts, 2023.

Poetry. “James Joyce | Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-joyce.

Rando, D.P. (2016). The future of Joyce's A Portrait: The Künstlerroman and

hope.DublinJames Joyce Journal, 9, 47-67. doi: 10.1353/

djj.2016.0003

Zimbaro, Valerie Pursel. CliffsNotes on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

<https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/book-

summary>.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Historical Context: The Struggle for Irish

Nationalism Reflected in Joyce’s Works | SparkNotes.” SparkNotes,

www.sparknotes.com/lit/portraitartist/historical-context.