Portrait of A Artist As A Young Man

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941)

Life :- James Joyce was born in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland in
1882 in a one prosperous middle-class family. The wealth of the family
declined due to his father, who had the temperament of the artist but
not the artist's industry. For a long time (from the age of six to sixteen)
Joyce had his education in an intensively Roman Catholic school. At that
time he was very much influenced by religion and he had depicted the
time minutely in his largely autobiographical novel “A Portrait of The
Artist as a Young Man”. From his youth onwards Joyce was a deliberate
exile : at first in spirit from the the monotony and drabness of Dublin
which he considered ‘the centre of paralysis' and soon in the literal
sense abroad. He not only rejected the Catholic faith, but also when a
student of modern languages at University College, Dublin, he had
nothing to do with the fervent nationalist cause of the time. He evolved
for himself an ideal of artist's objectivity. Which meant holding himself
aloof from all transitory political causes and movements so that he
might see the little world of Dublin as it really was. After graduating
B.A. in 1902, he decided to go into voluntary exile.
Like a number of artists of the time he first went to Paris. Finally he
moved to Zurich. He died in 1941.
2) Bildungsroman and Kuntslerroman :- Bildungsroman is also called
colucation novel novel, formation novel or upbringing novel. It deals
with the gradual upbringing of the protagonist. It is coined from the
German words ‘Bildung’, meaning ‘education’, and ‘Roman’ meaning
‘novel’.
Kuntslerroman is a particular type of Bildungsroman in which the
protagonist under discussion is an artist. The English rendering of this
German term is ‘artist novel'.
Works of James Joyce :-
I) ‘Dubliners’ – a collection of short stories. It was begun in 1900
and published in 1914.
II) ‘A Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man’ – (1916) – Novel.
III) ‘Exiles' – (1918) – Drama.
IV) ‘Ulysses’ – (1922)- Novel.
V) ‘Finnegan's Wake' – (1939) – Novel.
Stream of Consciousness :- It is a literary technique that tries to
present the flow of thoughts and sensory impressions that pass through
the mind each instant. Psychological association (rather than rules of
syntax or logic) determines the order of elements in the ‘stream’. In his
book ‘Principles of Psychology' (1890) William James made this term
popular. He used it to designate the flow and mixture of all past and
present experiences in the mind.
Works written using this technique will be naturally fragmented,
disjointed and disorderly – like our thoughts, emotions and sensory
impressions.
In English Literature this technique was made popular by Dorothy
Richardson. Later on it was used by the modernist writers like Virginia
Woolf, James Joyce etc.
Interior Monologue :- Stream of consciousness and interior monologue
should not be used interchangeably. Interior monologue is a mode of
narrative intended to reveal to the reader the subjective thoughts,
emotions and fleeting sensations experienced by a character. Interior
monologue is a type of stream of consciousness, in which a character's
subjective and ever-flowing mental commentary and observation are
presented, usually through free indirect discourse.
Daedalus Myth :- in Greek mythology Daedalus was a great artist. He
was an extremely was person. His son was Icarus. He built a labyrinth
for king Minos of Crete. However, shortly after its completion the King
imprisoned the artist and his son in that very labyrinth. Father and the
son devised a plan to escape by using wings made of wax that Daedalus
had invented. Daedalus, the matured, wise artist had safely landed on
Sicily. Young, romantic Icarus had flew so close to the sun that his wax
melted and he fell to his death.
Interestingly, the name of the hero in the novel under discussion is
Stephen Daedalus.
Joyce regarded his reference to this myth as being so important that he
prefaced the novel with a quotation drawn from the original story in
Ovid's “Metamorphosis” – ‘Et ignotus animum dimittit in artes', which
means, ‘And he turned his mind to unknown arts'.
Introduction to the novel :- To write an autobiographical novel was
Joyce's teenage dream. During teenage he had almost half-finished an
autobiographical work. By the year 1908, he had decided to rewrite the
book with a new method. At that time he had destroyed a large section
of the original manuscript, the remaining portion was published under
the title of ‘Stephen Hero'.
The work written with a mew method is the novel under discussion – “A
Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man”. It was published in 1916.
As a Bildungsroman (more specifically Kuntslerroman), the novel has
presented various stages of development of the protagonist Stephen
Daedalus :
I) The imaginative and unathletic small boy, hard-pressed by
narrow orthodoxies and brutalities of a Jesuit boarding school ;
II) His growing realization of his family's financial condition, and
the pride and arrogance, which he progressively summons to
his aid;
III) The overwhelming sense of sin into which the severity of
Catholic doctrine leads him upon the occasion of his untimely
sexual act ;
IV) The breaking of his nerve and his phase of anxious and
elaborate religious observance ;
V) His stumbling but sure advance towards an understanding of
the realm of art and his elected place in it;
VI) The crisis of his break family and church, and the exalting
moment of realization of his vocation.
Religion / Sex / Nationality
Influences on Joyce :- Joyce was probably influenced by diverse works
like –
a) St. Augustine's “Confessions”
b) Goethe's “Werther” and “Wilhelm Meister”
c) Newman's “Apologia Pro Vita Sua”
In the description of Hell he was certainly indebted to Dante, who is
the third part of “Divina Comedia” described hell. The name of that
part was “Inferno”.

Portrait of A Artist As A Young Man

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Portrait of A Artist As A Young Man

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Portrait of A Artist As A Young Man

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941)

You might also like