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Notes 15

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18 views

Notes 15

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zexalzexal12
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce, James (1916)

• a modernist novel
• a stream of consciousness novel
• flowing of dramatic interior/inner monologues
• free indirect discourse
• free associations, impressions, allusions, fragmentations
• subjectivity, retrospection and introspection
• intuitive and insightful narration of “epiphanies”, human consciousness, mind and psyche
• repetitive and experimental representation of unusual symbols, images and motifs
• a semi - autobiographical novel about a part of fictional life story of its main character, Stephen Dedalus and it contains some reflections from
the life of James Joyce himself
• a Bildungsroman that is entirely concerned with the internal, emotional and intellectual development and maturation of Stephen Dedalus
• a Künstlerroman about Stephen Dedalus’s artistic development related to the aesthetic terms and intellectual grounds
• a rhetorical quest for understanding Stephen’s own “self” / “being”
• seeking of his own truth and reality
• epiphanies
• private self vs. public self
• revolutionary feelings, isolation and alienation; being unable to participate and “silence exile and cunning”
• mythical and biblical images and allusions
• colour symbolism and music
• the influence of family; the influence of Catholism and Irish nationality on individuals
• oppressions and pressures of established authorities; “nets”
• sensibility and confusion
• misinterpretation and judgement
• sexual and sensual awakening; self-awareness
• rebellion, freedom, independence and change
Fiction of James Joyce (1882 - 1941), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Stream of Consciousness Technique & Epiphanies

• The Fiction of James Joyce is marked by moments of intense realization when his characters suddenly discover
truths about themselves and are given moments of intense insight when they grasp “a new phase of experience
through a series of awareness” (which is also called a moment of “epiphany”) coming with a perplexing shock
and even, challenging bewilderment at times.

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) particularly focuses on the “duration” of Stephen Dedalus’s
infancy to early adulthood, the representation of his private self in contrast with his social self and then, how
he initially decides to become an artist/a poet when he begins to recognize the fact that he questions, interprets
and perceives everything around him differently. The states and moments of epiphany highlight the intellectual,
emotional, artistic and aesthetic personal vocation that Stephen experiences, and they also characterize the turning
points in the novel as he realizes as well as interprets his “own reality of subjective, personal experience” in
many situations. He provides insights into life, world, art and literature through his epiphanies that are
reflected in the story intensively.

• Stephen’s new awareness towards his flight invokes an ancient myth to form a modern one.

• The emphasis is on the flight to creation and from son’s role to the father-image:

Daedalus, the amazing artificer → the attitude of Icarus, indicating the classical issue of flight,

the artist’s revulsion from his middle-class environment, the first and youthful effort to try one’s

father’s wings “to become an artificer/a creator” himself


Chapter I → the memories of infancy and childhood, experiences at home and school, challenging doubts
Chapter II → the sensual change and sexual awakening, the acts of sin as a result of bodily temptations
Chapter III → the intuitive religious agony and frustration, fear of God and Hell due to the sin committed
Chapter IV → the discipline of soul and body, questionable purification of both, signs and sparks of maturation,
denial of priesthood as a profession
Chapter V → the emancipation through rebellion and a state of beginning a new life towards freedom

Stephen ► a lively fictional character having taken a hard quest and eventually, is about to take another one: he “will take the risk” (269) “to live,
to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” (186).

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