Coles Notes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

126 Pages·1993·6.32 MB·English

by  Coles Editorial Board

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JOYCE
A PORTRAIT
OF THE ARTIST
AS A YOUNG MAN
NOTES
COLES EDITORIAL BOARD
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C()NTENTS
Page No.
James Joyce: Life and Works ....................... 1
Introduction to A Portrait oft he Artist
asa YoungMan ................................. 6
Historical Background ............................ 12
Plot Summal'Y ................................... 15
Characters in the Novel ........................... 17
Chapter by Chapter Summaries and Commentaries
CHAPTER I • SECTION A. ~ ........................... 20
SECTION B ............................. 22
SECTION C .............................. 23
SECTION D ............................. 25
CHAPTER 2 • SECTION A ............................. 26
SECTION B ............................. 27
SECTION C ............................. 28
SECTION 0 ......................... 29
0' ...
SECTION E ............................. 30
CH APTER 3 • SECTION A ............................. 32
SECTION B ............................. 32
SECTION C ............................. 34
CHAPTER 4 • SECTION A ............................. 35
SECTION B ............................. 36
SECTION C ............................. 38
CHAPTER 5 • SECTION A ............................. 40
SECTION B ............................. 41
SECTION C ............................. 42
SECTION 0 ............................. 44
SECTION E ..........................' ... 44
SECTION F ............................. 46
Character Sketches ............................... 48
Stephen Dedalus and James Joyce .................. 52
Structure ........................................ 54
Symbolism ...................................... 55
Motifs .......................... , ............... 57
A Portrait. as a ,Modern Novel ...................... 61
C n.t•lc aI A ppral. sa I ............................... . 67
Review Questions and Answers .................... 98
Glossary of Persons, Places and Names ............ 108
Bibliography .................................... 113
JOY.. ct': Lift' and Works
Janlt~s
A Portrait of the Artist as a YOllng Man is an autobiographi
cal novel. The main events in the life of its hero, Stephen
Dedalus, parallel the youthful experience of his creator,
.James Joyce. This does not mean that Stephen and Joyce are
to be seen in terms of a simple, one-to-one equation, for A
POrTrail, like all truly successful works of art, is a controlled
and selective interpretation of the artist's raw materials.
Critics have pointed out significant differences in character
between Stephen and Joyce, and we must remember that by
the time Joyce began to write A Portrail, he was more mature
and wiser than the young version of himself depicted in the
novel. He could, therefore, look back on his earlier self with
that mixture of affection and detachment that we all feel
when. for instance, we look at old photographs of ourselves:
how gawky and silly, or dumpy and dumb we may seem to our
present selves, yet somehow attractive and appealing also. In
view of this ironic perspective, it is not surprising that r"eaders
and critics of A Portrait tend to be divided in the attitude they
take toward Stephen. For some, Stephen is all 100 clearly
more a YOllng man than the artist, whereas for other readers he
has come to stand for all those gifted, rebellious youths who,
like Joyce himself, are finally fortunate enough to justify,
through solid achievements, their youthful alienation from
the mean and common life that might otherwise have trapped
them. It is a measure of Joyce's triumph that, instead of
turning his back entirely on his early experience, he very
deliberately made it the basis of his fiction.
Early Years
James Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, the
eldest of ten surviving children born to John Stanislaus Joyce,
a tax collector, and Mary Jane Joyce (nee Murray). By 1888,
the family moved to Bray, and Joyce was sent iri September of
that year' to Clongowes Wood College (a school conducted by
the Jesuits), where, the youngest member of his class, he
remained until 1891, returning home only for holidays. A
decline in his family's fortunes caused Joyce to be withdrawn
from Clongowes Wood but, in April, 1893, he was sent to
Belvedere College, Dublin, also a Jesuit school, where he had
a brilliant record, winning several prizes in the national
examinations and being elected i)resident of his fraternity.
Leaving Belvedere in 1899, he entered University College,
Dublin, and received his degree in 1902. Joyce's university
years were marked by increasing estrangement from his
family and his religious and national background. In May,
1899, he refused to sign a petition against the alleged heresy
of William Butler Yeats' Countess Cilthleen and, the following
year, he not only published a pamphlet, The Day of rhe
Rabblement, attacking the provincialism of the Irish Literary
Theatre, but also earned the envy of his schoolmates by
placing an article on Henrik Ibsen in The ForwiKhtly Review, a
very respectable English literary journal. After receiving his
degree in October, 1902, Joyce though t of entering medical
school, but decided to study in Paris instead. It was his hope to
be both a doctor and a writer, but he lacked th~ required
entrance fees to the Sorbonne and, instead of studying
formally, he settled down to the precarious, Bohemian life of
the Latin Quarter, 'existing on small allowances from home
and what little money he could make from reviewing books.
In April, 1903, he was called home by a telegram from his
father announcing that his mother was dying. He spent about
eighteen months in Dublin, teaching a term at a school in
Dalkey and living for a short time in the Martello tower at
Sandycove. Ulysses, which is not only in part a sequel to A
Portrait, but also a book that many critics consider to be the
greatest fictional achievement of the twentieth century, is set
during one day of that period - June 16, 1904, the
anniversary of which Joyceans now celebrate worldwide as
"Bloomsday. "
Many critics now agree that the date of Ulysses was
probably chosen because Ju.ne 16, 1904, marked the day when
Joyce formed a strong romantic attachment Wilh Nora Bar
nacle, a girl from the country who was working as a chamber
maid in Dublin. Joyce fell deeply in love with Nora, but he
objected strongly to the religious and social convention of
marriage. Unable to live with her openly in Ireland, he finally
overcame her middle-class protests and, by November, 1904,
persuaded her to elope with him to Zurich, where Joyce
thought a post had been arranged for him as an English
teacher in a Berlitz school. Arriving there, they found that a
2
mistake had been made, but Joyce impressed the head of the
school with his ability and, because an opening existed at the
Berlitz school in Pola, he was sent therc. Thc following year,
he and Nora moved to Trieste, their primary residence until
1920. Until Joyce's reputation as a writer began to earn him
royalties and the patronage of several well-to-do sponsors, he
made his living largely as a language teacher. A son, Giorgio,
was born to Joyce and Nora in 1905 and, two years later, a
daughter, Lucia. It was not until 1927 that the union between
Joyce and Nora wns made formally legitimate, and then only
in a civil ceremony at the persuasive instigation of IF. Byrne,
the original of the Cranly depicted in A Portrait.
First Writings
As the autobiographical nature of A Portrait makes clear,
Joyce was il)terested in language and writing long before he
left Ireland for the first time. In fact, his first publication
appeared in 1891, when Joyce was only nine years old. Fired
by indignation at the death of Charles Parnell. he wrote a
poem entitled Et Tu. lIealy, which his father had printed and
privately distributed. No copy is known to survive, but the
fact that Joyce wrote such a poem and that it so impressed his
father that he arranged for its printing helps us to understand
the intensity with which Joyce depicted the famous Christ
mas dinner scene in A Portrait.
Later, while in school and college, Joyce wrote not only
assigned themes, a few of which survive, but also tried his
hand at critical and creative writing. He translated two plays by
Gerhart Hauptmann, wrote a drama of his own (it is now lost,
but its title, A Brilliallt Career, may reveal something of the
young Joyce's ambition), and turned Ollt a series of short
prose fragments which he called EIJiphallies. Before his second
departure for the Continent, in 1904, he conceived the idea of
an autobiographical essay on the theme of "A Portrait of the
Artist" and wrote a short sketch with that title. This led to the
writing of a long novel, Stephen lIero, which, in turn. was to
be thoroughly revised and eventually published as A POrlrail
(~( Ihe Arlisl as a YOllng Mall. The former is more personal,
more detailed and naturalistic than the later version. Though
Joyce tried to burn the manuscript, enough pages survive 10
provide an interesting comparison with A POrl/·ail. Many of
3
Joyce's early essays, critical writings, his Epiphanies and the
fragmentary "Portrait of the Artist" have been collected in
The Crirical Wriril/gs of .James .Joyce, edited by Ellsworth
Mason and Richard Ellmann, and The Workshop a/Daedaills,
edited by Robert Scholes and Richard Kain.
Joyce was exiled in Trieste while writing A Porrrair and
did not complete the book u}ltil 1914. But, although separated
from the very substance from which he wrote, Joyce based his
novel on nationality, religion and language, the three great
elements of his Irish heritage. These are the subjects which
remained central to Joyce's entire work. Separated from his
subject and innucnced by Flaubert's naturalism and
D'Annunzio's mythical structures, Joyce was finally able to
write the kind of novel that would be unique in its exploration
of the formative years of an artist. In Trieste, Joyce detached
himself from the immediacy of circumstance and events
attached to the novel. The result was a subtle shading and
detached irony in the work.
While working '.on A Porrrail, Joyce was also writing a
group of related short stories, which were to be, as he called
them, "chapters in the moral history of my race," After many
publishing difficulties, the collection, entitled Dlib/il/ers, ap
peared in June, 1914. £\'i/e5, Joyce's only play, was written in
1915 and first published in 1918.
The Later Years
During his years in Trieste, Joyce suffered from an eye
disease, which was never completely cured and which was to
plague him for the remainder of his life. At the request of Ezra
Pound, Joyce and his family moved to Paris in 1920. In
1922, Ulysses was published by Shakespeare and Company in
Paris. It was the publication of U~vsses, in spite of the violent
reaction it caused in some quarters, that established Joyce as
one of the masters of modern literature.
Afler the publication of Ulysses, Joyce spent the next
seventeen years of his life writing Finnegans Wake, which was
published in May, 1939. During his years in Paris, Joyce be
came one of the central literary figures in the world. He was
visited and revered by most of the American expatriates as
well as many of the British and continental men of letters. His
life, however, was never an easy one. He had constant finan-
4
cial problems coupled by frustrations with publishers and the
banning of Ulysses in both England and America. He suffered
a great deal with his eyes and, during most of the composition
of Finnegans Wake, he was nearly blind.
As the dark clouds of war were forming over Europe,
Joyce finally left Paris for Zurich. It was there, on the conti
nent to which he could only give half allegiance, that he died
on January 13. 1941. Nora, the only part of Ireland left for
him. was there. Announcements of his death to the English
speaking world were buried under the headlines of the
German Luftwaffe's bombing of Plymouth or the Wehr
macht's advances on nearly every front. Joyce, the man of
neutral cities (Trieste, Dublin, Zurich), was quietly forgotten
under the avalanche of war. As the artist was suppressed by
death and circumstance, his works were to be temporarily
overshadowed by crisis. Stephen Dedalus' quest for his des
tiny as an artist, Leopold Bloom's day-long journey through
Dublin in search of a spiritual son, H.C. Earwicker's long
dream in Fifll!e!(ans Wake, and even Molly Bloom's earthy
soliloquy - all were submerged while men of the great
nations of the Western world devastated each other.
Joyce's popularity in America, a country which he had
always wanted to visit but for his fear of boats. has been
nothing short of spectacular. Some Irish and British men of
letters look upon his popularity as another curious American
phenomenon, and disparagingly refer to all of the books and
articles written about his life and work as the American Joyce
industry. From the landmark decision of Judge Woolsey in
1933 that admitted Ulysses into the country, to the more than
thirty books published on Joyce in the 1960s alone, Joyce has
become one of the most avidly studied writers in North
America.
5
Introduction to A Portrait oft he Artist as
a YoungMan
James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Yotlng Mall was
first published in the United States by B.W. Huebsch on
December 29, 1916. It had appeared earlier in serial form
beginning with the February 2, 1914, issue of Harriet Shaw
Weaver's The ERaist.
Joyce's novel has made a profound impression on
readers of the twentieth century. Literally hundreds of essays
and reviews have been written on A Portrait but, more im
portantly, the novel has been a great influence on many
writers who followed Joyce. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Thomas
Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many other literary artists have
praised A Portrait for its artistry, irony and its essential truth.
The hero of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, is perhaps the
most well-known literary character to have been created in
the first half of this century. As with most great novels,
however, .4 Portrait did not fit into any pattern with its con
temporaries. When it first appeared, readers failed to grasp its
subtle meanings and thematic implications. Because it was
original, A Portrait did not fit into any easy categories. Critics
who tried to analyze it were forced to find new critical
approaches and insights in trying to explain its elusive
meaning.
Therefore, before beginning a serious study or A Portrait,
one should establish a good understanding of a few literary
techniques, ideas ,111(\ devices which Joyce uses in his novel. A
knowledge of these will make the novel much more under
standable and enjoyable as well.
Autobiographical Novel
To say that .4 Portrait is autobiographical is not to say that
the hero, Stephen Dcdalus, is James Joyce, or that Joyce is
merely recounting events of his own life. To be sure, most
of the events in A Portrait are similar to the experiences of
the young Joyce during his days in Dublin. But Joyce lifted
these events from the merely personal and autobiographical
to the level of arl. A Portrait is writ~en in the tradition of
the Bildul1gsromall, a German term, which translates roughly
as "the novel of development." This kind of novel wa~ very
6