Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• By James Joyce

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Information on the novel

• Semi-autobiographical Joyce used to use the main
  characters name, Stephen Dedalus, as a pseudonym
• First serialized in The Egoist in 1914 and 1915
• Published in book form in 1916
• Originally called Stephen Hero
• Describes life of Stephen Dedalus over 20 year
  span
• Fictional alter ego of Joyce
• References (is allusion to) the myth of Daedalus
  and Icarus
• Also references Saint Stephen, who was first
  Christian martyr and rebelled against religion

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Style

• Written in third person narrative
• Dialogue intensive scenes at end otherwise
  dialogue uses no punctuation except dash
• Journal entries and stream-of-consciousness
• Aesthetic theory
• New way of seeing and perceiving world
• Critical reflection on art, culture and nature
  (wiki).
• Language grows more complex as novel reaches end,
  mirroring complexity of Stephens thoughts and
  providing insight into his growth, maturity, and
  insight as a character
• Intent to capture subjective experience through
  language (wiki)
• Narrative is fragmented there is no real plot,
  with gaps in chronology
• Run-ons, punctuation wrong, new words, few
  commas

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Structure

• Five sections/chapters
• Each deals with different time period in
  Stephens life
• Chapter One takes Stephen from his infancy into
  his first years at school. In this chapter,
  Stephen becomes aware of the five senses and of
  language itself, and he takes the first steps to
  assert his independence. Chapter Two includes his
  awareness of his family's declining fortunes and
  his move from Clongowes Wood School to Belvedere
  School in Dublin. It ends with his sexual
  initiation in the arms of a prostitute. In the
  third chapter, Stephen is preoccupied with his
  sin and the possible consequences of his sin. The
  fourth chapter takes place at Belvedere School.
  Stephen attempts to understand the precepts of
  his religion and to lead a life in accordance
  with those precepts. However, he recognizes that
  his independent nature will not allow him to
  serve as a priest of the Church. Instead, he will
  become an artist, a "priest of eternal
  imagination." In Chapter five, Stephen takes
  further steps to formulate his aesthetic theory.
  He also makes a final declaration of independence
  from his friends, his family, his religion, and
  his country. (notes on novels)

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Portrait is The Best

• Within each chapter there are several distinct,
  self-contained scenes or episodes. These episodes
  are, in effect, "portraits." Each episode centers
  around or culminates in an epiphany a moment of
  euphoric insight and understanding that
  significantly contributes to Stephen's personal
  education. The epiphany often occurs during an
  otherwise trivial incident, and is the central
  organizing feature in Joyce's work. However,
  these epiphanies are undercut by
  "anti-epiphanies" moments of disillusion or
  disappointment that bring Stephen back to earth.
  Each shift between epiphany and anti-epiphany is
  accompanied by a shift in the tone of Joyce's
  language. The epiphany scenes are generally
  written in a poetic and lofty language. By
  contrast, the language in the anti-epiphany
  scenes emphasizes less noble aspects of life.
  Taken together, Joyce uses the give-and-take
  shift between epiphany and anti-epiphany to show
  the paradoxes of life. (notes on novels)

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Portrait of Portrait

• Book is set in Ireland, primarily Dublin
• Book is known as a kuntslerroman
  kyun-sell-roman--(bildungsroman but about an
  artist the formation of an artist)
• Stephen rebels against Catholicism and Ireland
  and eventually moves to Paris, where he pursues
  his life as an artist

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SYMBOLS

• The five senses sight, sound, taste, smell,
  touch are recurrent symbols throughout A
  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen's
  reliance on the five senses is signaled in the
  book's first few pages. Here we are made aware of
  the way his father looks to Stephen (sight), the
  songs that are sung to him and the clapping of
  Uncle Charles and Dante (sound), the feeling when
  he wets the bed (touch), and the reward of a
  "cachou" (cashew taste) from Dante. Joyce
  considered the five senses to be indispensible
  tools for the literary artist. Of these, the
  sense of sight is most prominent. The importance
  of sight and its fragility is a recurring
  motif throughout the novel. This reliance on, and
  fear for, sight is embodied in the phrase "the
  eagles will come and pull out his eyes," which
  Dante says to Stephen after his mother tells him
  to apologize for something. Stephen makes a
  rhyme, "pull out his eyes / Apologise."
  (Significantly, Joyce suffered from eye problems
  later in his life, and was to undergo several eye
  operations.) At various points in the novel,
  Stephen refuses to apologize for his actions and
  decisions, even at the risk of perhaps losing his
  vision, metaphorically. For example, in Chapter
  One he listens to Mr. Casey's anecdote about
  spitting in a woman's eye. At Clongowes school,
  Father Dolan punishes Stephen for having broken
  his glasses. In Chapter Four, Stephen attempts a
  mortification of the senses to repent for his
  earlier sins. (from notes on novels)

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Symbols

• Religious symbols abound. There are numerous
  references to various elements and rites of Roman
  Catholicism the priest's soutane, the censor,
  and the sacraments of communion and confession.
  Bird symbolism is prominent too. In addition to
  the eagles mentioned above, there is Stephen's
  school friend and rival Heron, who is associated
  with the "birds of prey." Stephen later thinks of
  himself as a "hawklike man," a patient and
  solitary bird who can view society from a great
  height but who remains aloof from the world that
  he views. (notes on novels)

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The Myth of Daedalus and Icarus

• Daedalus was an artisan, highly respected and
  talented.
• Called on by Minos
• (King of Crete) to
• build the labyrinth, which
• would imprison the
• minotaur (horrible beast)

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The Myth, continued

• The minotaur fed on humans
• Daedalus angered Minos by helping King Theseus
  defeat the minotaur
• He was imprisoned with Icarus, his son, in the
  labyrinth
• Daedalus devised a plan to escape.

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The Myth, continued

• Daedalus built wings made out of feathers and wax
• He told his son, Icarus, to stay away from the
  sun and the ocean, as they could ruin the wings
• His son did not listen.He flew too close to the
  sun and his wings melted, plunging him into the
  ocean
• Daedalus escaped, and Icarus body was found and
  buried by Heracles

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SO!

• Using your Supreme Powers of AP Deduction, what
  do you suppose the labyrinth in the myth
  represents in the novel?????
• (Cue Jeopardy music)

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Do You Got Smarts?

• If you answered DUBLIN or IRELAND, give your
  self a pat on the back!
• What are the implications of calling
  Dublin/Ireland a labyrinth? What metaphors do
  you see doing their work there?

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Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

• Painting by Pieter Brueghel

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Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

• According to Brueghel
• when Icarus fell
• it was spring
• a farmer was ploughing
• his field
• the whole pageantry
• of the year was
• awake tingling
• near
• the edge of the sea
• concerned
• with itself

sweating in the sunthat meltedthe wings'
wax unsignificantlyoff the coastthere was a
splash quite unnoticedthis wasIcarus drowning
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Musee Des Beaux Arts

• About suffering they were never wrong, The Old
  Masters how well, they understood Its human
  position how it takes place While someone else
  is eating or opening a window or just walking
  dully along How, when the aged are reverently,
  passionately waiting For the miraculous birth,
  there always must be Children who did not
  specially want it to happen, skating On a pond
  at the edge of the wood They never forgot That
  even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
  Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the
  dogs go on with their doggy life and the
  torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind
  on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance
  how everything turns away Quite leisurely from
  the disaster the ploughman may Have heard the
  splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not
  an important failure the sun shone As it had to
  on the white legs disappearing into the green
  Water and the expensive delicate ship that must
  have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out
  of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed
  calmly on.
• W.H. Auden

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So..

• Obviously, Portrait is very linked to art and
  Greek mythology
• Its not autobiographical all the way
• However, it contained much of Joyces own life--
  the boarding schools, his fathers debts, and
  symbols of social, cultural and religious aspects
  of Dublin.
• Most of the characters actually appeared in
  Joyces life.

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The Artist Apart From Society

• Stephen Dedalus (and Joyce) feel separated from
  the worldmajor sense of isolation, alienation
• Stylistically, the stream of consciousness could
  be a by-product of this alienation
• This narrative technique takes us into both the
  conscious and subconscious mind of Stephen.so we
  (reader) can see all of his tumultuous feelings
• We see the subjective and objective reality of
  each situation

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Joyce the REBEL!!!

• Joyce refuses to conform to the standard form of
  the novel.
• Joyce is a combined realist, symbolist, (ideas
  via symbols) impressionist, (details are used to
  evoke subjective impressions), modernist, and
  psychological novelist (mind, motive, reason
  and links between.)

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Modernism

• From Encyclopedia Brittanica The spirit of
  Modernisma radical and utopian spirit stimulated
  by new ideas in anthropology, psychology,
  philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis
• 1908-1914, approx
• Imagists were a part of the Modernist movement
  it ended around the first World War--Chasm
  between ideals and reality was made all too
  clear.

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Modernists You Know

• Some works of D.H. Lawrence
• Some works of T.S. Eliot
• (But both of them later on changed their views!)
• Lawrence began to believe in charismatic,
  masculine leadership (Encyclopedia B) Eliot in
  hierarchy and order (EB).

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Sos You Got Smarts

• Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot were the
  principal male figures of Anglo-American
  Modernism, but important contributions also were
  made by the Irish poet and playwright William
  Butler Yeats (THE SECOND COMING) and the Irish
  novelist James Joyce. (EB)

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Now You Want To Run Out And Read The Whole Book,
RIGHT?

• Famous quotes in Portrait
• Top Ten Quotes
• 1. "He would fade into something impalpable under
  her eyes and then in a moment, he would be
  transfigured. Weakness and timidity and
  inexperience would fall from him in that magic
  moment." Stephen's youthful imaginings about a
  mysterious ideal female.
• 2. "His childhood was dead or lost and with it
  his soul capable of simple joys, and he was
  drifting amid life like the barren shell of the
  moon." Stephen reflects on his life during his
  trip to Cork with his father.

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3. "He felt that he was hardly of the one blood
with them but stood to them rather in the
mystical kinship of fosterage, foster child and
foster brother." Stephen begins to feel isolated
from his mother, brother and sister. 4. "His
soul was fattening and congealing into a gross
grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear
into a sombre threatening dusk, while the body
that was his stood, listless and dishonoured,
gazing out of darkened eyes, helpless, perturbed,
and human for a bovine god to stare upon." After
hearing the rector speak about sin and salvation,
Stephen feels guilty about his own sins.
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5. "His soul sickened at the thought of a torpid
snaky life feeding itself out of the tender
marrow of his life and fattening upon the slime
of lust." Stephen's thoughts about the nature of
sin, as he hurries to a chapel to confess. 6.
"Life became a divine gift for every moment and
sensation of which, were it even the sight of a
single leaf hanging on the twig of a tree, his
soul should praise and thank the Giver."
Stephen's reflections during his period of piety
at Belvedere College.
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7. "He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart
from others or to learn the wisdom of others
himself wandering among the snares of the world."
Stephen's thoughts immediately after he realizes
he will never be a priest. 8. "Yes! Yes! Yes!
He would create proudly out of the freedom and
power of his soul, as the great artificer whose
name he bore, a living thing new and soaring and
beautiful, impalpable, imperishable." Stephen
realizes his calling as an artist.
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• 9. "Whatever else is unsure in this stinking
  dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."
  Cranly (friend of Stephens) tries to persuade
  Stephen to listen to his mother.
• 10. "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the
  millionth time the reality of experience and to
  forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated
  conscience of my race." Stephen's penultimate
  journal entry.

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• I WILL FLY BY THOSE NETS!!!
• What do you think this means?
• How does it fit in with the theme of AP Lit this
  yearhow have we progressed through the year in
  terms of the self and who controls us?