Novel: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialised in the magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in 1916 by B. W. Huebsch, New York. The first British edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917. The story describes the formative years of the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus.
A novel written in Joyce's characteristic free indirect speech style, A Portrait is a major 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 with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world",[1] was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.[2]
Contents
1 Composition 2 Literary style 3 Allusions in the novel 4 Allusions to the novel 5 In film 6 Further reading 7 References 8 External links
Composition
[icon] This section requires expansion. (June 2010)
Portrait is a rewrite of Joyce's earlier attempt at the story as written in Stephen Hero, with which he grew frustrated in 1905. The story was changed considerably to emphasize the psychological experience of Stephen Dedalus. For instance, several of his siblings were major characters of the earlier version, but are almost completely absent in Portrait. The incomplete first draft of Stephen Hero was published posthumously in 1944.
Literary style
Question book-new.svg
This section does not
A novel written in Joyce's characteristic free indirect speech style, A Portrait is a major 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 with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world",[1] was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.[2]
Contents
1 Composition 2 Literary style 3 Allusions in the novel 4 Allusions to the novel 5 In film 6 Further reading 7 References 8 External links
Composition
[icon] This section requires expansion. (June 2010)
Portrait is a rewrite of Joyce's earlier attempt at the story as written in Stephen Hero, with which he grew frustrated in 1905. The story was changed considerably to emphasize the psychological experience of Stephen Dedalus. For instance, several of his siblings were major characters of the earlier version, but are almost completely absent in Portrait. The incomplete first draft of Stephen Hero was published posthumously in 1944.
Literary style
Question book-new.svg
This section does not