A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Author: James Joyce | Language: English | ISBN:
B00C0YIQZ0 | Format: EPUB
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Description
This edition incorporates an original introduction from Moorside Press, including a biography, a critical discussion of Joyce's place in the history of English Literature and a short contextual discussion of the book.
Serialised in 1914 and published as a book in 1916, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a longer history having been written first as a straight autobiography or 'aesthetic essay' as far back as 1904. The plot deals with the experiences of Stephen Dedalus as he grows from a boy to a man, as he is steeped in Catholicism and then scared away from it, and as he learns the sense of Irish conventions, but then moves abroad to escape from them.
Joyce wrote the novel using a literary style that mirrors the growth of Dedalus' intellect, starting with a childish, stilted prose, before gradually adding more complex words and erudition. While the structure is on the whole more conventional than his later works – essentially accepting the Bildungsroman approach of personal discovery – aspects of Joyce's style flow, including his use of indirect speech, echo the advances shown fully in Ulysses.
- File Size: 464 KB
- Print Length: 237 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publisher: Moorside Press (March 24, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00C0YIQZ0
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,187 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
I'm always up for a good challenge, whether it be in books, music or movies, and from what I've heard Joyce is about as challenging as they come in the literary world. However, since it seemed like "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake" would be a bit much to start with, I found myself reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" as an introduction to his work. And although I found this book about as easy to get into as Princeton, it was about as rewarding as well. "Portrait" is certainly anything but a light read. Joyce's meandering narrative and serpentine prose can be confusing to say the least, and on more than one occasion I had to read a sentence about five times in order to figure out what I had just read. For all its verbosity, though, "Portrait" is an essential read because the story of Stephen Dedalus carries so much resonance. I'm about the same age as Stephen was in this story, and I can relate pretty easily to his search for answers. Growing up in Ireland around the turn of the twentieth century, Stephen faces existential questions that should ring true for a young person coming from any culture at any time. He tries to find satisfaction by giving in to his lust, and when that doesn't work he goes all the way to the other end of the spectrum in seeking fulfillment through religious devotion. In the end, however, neither of these extremes provides Stephen with the answers he's looking for. Stephen's story demonstrates one unfortunate fact of life: when you're seeking meaning, there are no easy answers.
I've seen some reviews that criticize the book for being too stream of consciousness and others for not being s.o.c. enough. The fact is, for the most part it's not s.o.c. at all. (See the Chicago Manual of Style, 10.45-10.47 and note the example they give...Joyce knew how to write s.o.c.). A better word for A Portrait is impressionistic. Joyce is more concerned with giving the reader an impression of Stephen's experience than with emptying the contents of his head. What's confusing is the style mirrors the way Stephen interprets his experiences at the time, according to the level of his mental development.
When Stephen is a baby, you get only what comes in through the five senses. When he is a young boy, you get the experience refracted through a prism of many things: his illness (for those who've read Ulysses, here is the beginning of Stephen's hydrophobia - "How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum."), his poor eyesight, the radically mixed signals he's been given about religion and politics (the Christmas meal), his unfair punishment, and maybe most important of all, his father's unusual expressions (growing up with phrases like, "There's more cunning in one of those warts on his bald head than in a pack of jack foxes" how could this kid become anything but a writer?)
It is crucial to understand that Stephen's experiences are being given a certain inflection in this way when you come to the middle of the book and the sermon. You have to remember that Stephen has been far from a good Catholic boy. Among other things, he's been visting the brothels! The sermon hits him with a special intensity, so much so that it changes his life forever. Before it he's completely absorbed in the physical: food, sex, etc.
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