Potrait of an artist as a young man

POTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A
YOUNG MAN
Prepared by :-
Abhyudita Gautam
Asst. Prof. of English
G.C. Nagrota Bagwan

Introduction
 A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man is the first novel of
Irish writer James Joyce in a modernist style
 It traces the religious and intellectual awakening of
young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and
an allusion to Daedalus.
 Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish
conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his
self-exile from Ireland to Europe.
 A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man is one of the earlier
examples in English literature of a novel that makes
extensive use of stream of consciousness. Stream of
conscious is a narrative technique through which the author
attempts to represent the fluid and eruptive nature of
human thought

Introduction
 A Portrait began life in 1904 as Stephen Hero—a projected
63-chapter autobiographical novel in a realistic style.
 A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man was first published in
serial form in the Egoist in the years 1914-15.Chronicling
the life of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to young
adulthood and his life-changing decision to leave Ireland,
the novel is profoundly autobiographical. Like Stephen,
Joyce had early experiences with prostitutes during his
teenage years and struggled with questions of faith.
 Although many sections of the novel are narrated in a
relatively direct style, Joyce writes long passages that
sustain a complex and difficult language attempting to
approximate the workings of human thought.

Character List
 Stephen Dedalus - The main character of A Portrait of
the Artist as aYoung Man.
 Simon Dedalus - Stephen's father, an impoverished
former medical student with a strong sense of Irish
patriotism.
 Mary Dedalus - Stephen's mother and Simon Dedalus's
wife.
 The Dedalus Children - Stephen has several brothers
and sisters, including Maurice, Katey, Maggie, and Boody
 Emma Clery - Stephen's beloved, the young girl to
whom he is fiercely attracted over the course of many
years.

 Mr. John Casey - Simon Dedalus's friend, who
attends the Christmas dinner at which young
Stephen is allowed to sit with the adults for the
first time.
 Charles Stewart Parnell - An Irish political leader
who is not an actual character in the novel, but
whose death influences many of its characters.
 Dante (Mrs. Riordan) - The extremely fervent and
piously Catholic governess of the Dedalus
children.
 Uncle Charles - Stephen's lively great uncle.
Charles lives with Stephen's family.

Character List
 EileenVance - A young girl who lives near Stephen when
he is a young boy.
 Father Conmee - The rector at ClongowesWood College,
where Stephen attends school as a young boy.
 Father Dolan - The cruel prefect of studies at Clongowes
WoodCollege.
 Wells - The bully at Clongowes.
 Athy - A friendly boy whom Stephen meets in the
infirmary at Clongowes.
 Brother Michael - The kindly brother who tends to
Stephen and Athy in the Clongowes infirmary afterWells
pushes Stephen into the cesspool.

Character List
 Fleming - One of Stephen's friends at Clongowes.
 Father Arnall - Stephen's stern Latin teacher at
Clongowes.
 Mike Flynn - A friend of Simon Dedalus's
 Aubrey Mills - A young boy with whom Stephen
plays imaginary adventure games at Blackrock.
 Vincent Heron - A rival of Stephen's at Belvedere.
 Boland And Nash - Two schoolmates of Stephen's
at Belvedere, who taunt and bully him.

Character List
 Cranly - Stephen's best friend at the university,
 Davin - Another of Stephen's friends at the
university.
 Lynch - Another of Stephen's friends at the
university, a coarse and often unpleasantly dry
young man.
 McCann - A fiercely political student at the
university who tries to convince Stephen to be
more concerned with politics.

 Temple - A young man at the university
who openly admires Stephen's keen
independence and tries to copy his ideas
and sentiments.
 Dean Of Studies - A Jesuit priest at
University College.
 Johnny Cashman - A friend of Simon
Dedalus.

Overview
 A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung 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 where he
feels 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.

Overview
 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 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.

Overview
 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
 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
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.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Themes
 Entrapment and Constraint
 Stephen eventually comes to see Ireland as a kind of trap,
a restraint that will make it impossible for him to live and
create.Three major bonds threaten: family, nation, and
the Church. Stephen's family, increasingly destitute, is a
source of frustration and guilt. He can do nothing to help
them, and the continued ineptitude of his father
exasperates Stephen.Though his father is an ardent
nationalist, Stephen has great anxieties about Irish
politics. He finds the Irish people fickle and ultimately
disloyal; at one point, he says to a friend that the Irish
have never had a great leader whom they did not betray
or abandon. He also rebels against the nature of activities
like petition-signing and protest; in his mind, these
activities amount to an abdication of independence.At
the same time, he leaves Ireland hoping to forge the new
conscience of his race.

Catholicism
The Church is perhaps the greatest constraint
on Stephen, and merits its own entry.The
teachings of the Church run contrary to
Stephen's independent spirit and intellect. His
sensitivity to beauty and the human body are
not at all suitable to the rigidCatholicism in
which he was raised. But the Church continues
to exert some small hold on him. Although he
eventually becomes an unbeliever, he
continues to have some fear that the Catholic
Church might be correct. Despite his fears, he
eventually chooses to live independently and
without constraint, even if that decision sends
him to hell.

 Escape
 Escape is the natural complement to the
theme of Entrapment and Constraint.
Joyce depicts escape metaphorically by the
book's most important symbol and
allusion: the mythical artificer Dedalus.
Dedalus is not at all an Irish name; Joyce
took the name from the mythical inventor
who escaped from his island prison by
constructing wings and flying to his
freedom. Stephen, too, will eventually
escape from the island prison of Ireland.

Independence
Closely related to the above theme, Stephen's move towards
independence is one of the central movements of the novel.
When we first encounter Stephen as a young boy, his athletic
ineptitude and sensitive nature make him an easy target for
bullies. He is a rather shy and awkward boy.The contrast with the
university student Stephen could not be greater.The older
Stephen is fiercely independent, willing to risk eternal damnation
to pursue his destiny. He is not cowed by anyone, and he will
pursue life as an artist no matter what the cost.

 Beauty, Sensitivity, and Imagination
 What begins as sensitivity and imagination in the
child Stephen eventually evolves into a near-
obsessive contemplation of beauty and the
mechanics of art. Even as a child, young Stephen is a
extraordinarily imaginative and sensitive boy.
Eventually, these strong but unarticulated feelings
take shape as a passion for the arts. In Chapter 5,
Stephen has developed a theory of aesthetics that is
quite sophisticated for a university student; he
thinks carefully and thoroughly about beauty and
the power of art, and knows that he can do nothing
else but pursue the life of a poet and writer.

Questions
 What is the significance of the title A Portrait of the Artist As a
Young Man? How does it relate to the growth and evolution of
Stephen Dedalus?
 What do you understand by the term "stream of
consciousness" with reference to A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man by James Joyce?
 What is a detailed description of Stephen Dedalus's aesthetic
theory?
 In Chapter 4 of A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man, how does
Joyce use stream of consciousness to describe Stephen's
rejection of the priesthood?
 Account for Stephen's change of personality from Chapter IV to
ChapterV. Explain the circumstances which lead to the
changes.

Potrait of an artist as a young man

Potrait of an artist as a young man

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