A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Image:Portaiaaaaaym.jpgA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiographical bildungsroman by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist between 1914-1915 and published in book form in 1916. It is the story of the growth and education of Stephen Dedalus, an alter ego for Joyce named after the Grecian mythological craftsman Daedalus. The work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The prime example of the Künstlerroman in the 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.

Portrait is a complete rewrite of his earlier attempt at the story, Stephen Hero, which he grew frustrated with 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.

The book is most noted for its stream-of-consciousness style that sets out to mirror what the protagonist is thinking. Since the work covers the protagonist aging from a young child to a man, the style of the work differs in each of its five sections, with the complexity and vocabulary gradually increasing. Stylistically, the novel is mostly written as a third person narrative, though towards the end of the book dialogue and finally journal entries by Stephen are relied on instead to mirror his alienation from society.

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.

The title has been plagiarised 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 A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts' A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man and in Grayson Perry's biography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.

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Trivia

In Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, Humbert Humbert gives Lolita this book when she is in the hospital, and recommends it warmly.
This book also crops up in F. Scott Fitzgerald's book This Side of Paradise, following Amory Blaine's three week drinking binge. Amory Blaine was heartbroken after being rejected and drank, thereby shielding his memory from the stabs.
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:

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 carfully as the product of the craftmanship, mind and imagination of an artist.

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