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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 novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916. It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and a pointed allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus.
A Portrait is a key example of the Künstlerroman (an artist's bildungsroman) 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. The Modern Library ranked Portrait as the third greatest English-language novel of the twentieth century.[1]
Previous Version
Portrait is a complete rewrite of his earlier attempt at the story, Stephen Hero, with which he grew frustrated 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.
Cover to the first U.S. book edition, 1917
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.
Allusions/references in the novel
Allusions to history and geography
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. A particular figure, who is also mentioned in Dubliners and Ulysses, and alluded to in Finnegans Wake, is the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell.
Allusions to other works
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus features prominently in the novel. In Greek myth, Daedalus was an architect and inventor who almost becomes trapped in a labyrinth of his own construction. He later escapes and fashions wings of feathers and wax for his son and himself to escape the island they are on. As they fly away Icarus grows bolder and flies higher, until finally he flies too close to the sun, which causes the wax to melt, and he plummets into the sea. This myth echoes the central themes of the novel - refusal to follow the path of the father, individual rebellion and discovery, producing a work of art that entraps the artificer, or allows him to escape his past.
Stephen's name is an allusion to Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen Dedalus, like Saint Stephen, has conflicts with the established religion.
The Divine Comedy is also echoed in the name Stephen gives his aunt - Dante. Dante is so-called because of the way 'The Auntie' sounds in her Cork accent.
Ovid's Metamorphoses is referenced at the start with a quote saying, "Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes" Translation: "And he sets his mind to unknown arts"
Allusions/references to the novel in other works
Allusions to the title
The title has been adapted 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 Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts' A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man, Grayson Perry's biography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl and William Eastlake's Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses. In Patrick White's novel The Solid Mandala, Waldo Brown plans but fails to write a novel called Tiresias a Youngish Man, thereby parodying both Joyce's novel and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
The Northern Irish poet Nick Laird has published a poem in his collection To a Fault entitled "A Portrait of the Artist as a Joke" which deals with the narrator's own identity and considers perpetuated Irish stereotypes through a mixture of stark anecdote and fragmented images.
The band Antimatter have included a song on Planetary Confinement, their third studio album, titled 'A Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist'. This song is a "reflection on the Liverpool music scene[1]".
In the King of the Hill episode "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clown", Bobby Hill is enrolled in clown college.
The Title of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" was also referred to by Hip-Hop artist Talib Kweli in the song "Memories Live" from his album Reflection Eternal : "Though it kinda' make me think of way back when, I was the portrait of the artist as a young man"
The band Ram Jam in 1978 released their album Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Ram.
Nick Joaquin, National Artist of the Philippines, also wrote a play in 1952 entitled "Portrait of the Artist as Filipino: An Elegy in Three Scenes" which problematized the idea of the Filipino identity. The play features a painting which supports the allusion to James Joyce's Dedalus character as artificer entrapped by his own creation.
In Film
A low-key 1977 Joseph Strick production of the book starred Bosco Hogan as Stephen Dedalus, TP McKenna as Simon Dedalus and included a famous cameo appearance by Sir John Gielgud as a priest-on-a-pulpit.[2]
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:
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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 craftsmanship, mind and imagination of an artist. |
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References
- ^ "100 Best Novels". Random House (1999). Retrieved on 2007-06-23.
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).
- Yoshida, Hiromi. Joyce & Jung: The "Four Stages of Eroticism" in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (2007).
External links
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