A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A Brief Overview

James Joyce published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, after re-working a stalled manuscript titled Stephen Hero. Portrait, Joyce’s first novel, chronicles the intellectual awakening of Stephen Dedalus (a.k.a. Joyce’s alter-ego), one of the protagonists of Ulysses. As the title suggests, Portrait is the most autobiographical of Joyce’s works. The novel is a fictionalized and highly condensed version of Joyce’s boyhood education in the Jesuit schools of Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College. It might also be noted that Portrait serves as a prequel of sorts to Ulysses.

Portrait is a prime example of the Kunstlerroman, (novel of the artist), which is an offshoot of the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel). Typically, the Kunstlerroman examines the artist’s development from childhood to the point at which his or her artistic potential is realized. Other examples of the artist’s novel include Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. What is interesting about Portrait, however, is that this development occurs in the mind of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus. Through a series of epiphanies, Dedalus’ intellect gradually develops, and this process is reflected in the novel’s narrative style. Beginning with snapshot-like memories of a schoolboy and ending with the theoretical musings of a young university student, we witness the metamorphosis of the introspective and philosophical Stephen Dedalus.

Unlike Ulysses, I will not be reading Portrait for the first time. My initial encounter with the novel occurred a few years ago in college. Back then, I studied the novel in relation to the Modernist period of literature and the ways in which it compared and contrasted with its contemporaries. However, this time around I am interested in seeing how the novel leads up to Ulysses as well as seeing if Portrait helps shine some light on Joyce’s more difficult work.