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Aesthetic theory of the portrait of the artist as a young man
Aesthetic theory of the portrait of the artist as a young man
Aesthetic elements in A portrait of the artist as a young man
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James Joyce’s, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, serves as a psychological look into the maturation that occurs within children as they constantly absorb different elements of life. Stephen Dedalus represents what most boy experience while growing up, and his struggles and triumphs serve as an ideal example for the bildungsroman genre. Of the numerous themes within the novel, Joyce’s inclusion of vivid imagery and sensory details provide for an enhanced reader experience. It is important to note his use of imagery to mature the character of Stephen throughout the novel, and how they influence Stephen’s behavior as he explores his sexuality, struggles with accepting religion and, and attempts to understand his calling in life beyond school.
The story relayed in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, centers on Stephen Dedalus, a young Irish schoolboy in the early 20th century. Using stream of consciousness, Joyce provides his reader with a firsthand perspective into the mind of the protagonist Stephen. From the time he is a small child up until his early 20s, Stephen goes through many personality changes that mimic what any human being goes through growing up. Joyce makes Stephen’s case different by incorporating innumerable amounts of influences in his life, including Stephen’s father, omnipresent thoughts of sex, moocows, and fiery sermons condemning sinners of their wrong doings. Eventually Stephen must make a on what it is that he desires in life other than his natural impulses and the need to appease the religious portion of his psyche.
For a large part of the novel, Stephen struggles with the impulses of sexuality, and needing to delve into his innate feelings as an adolescent. His encounter with a prostitute at ...
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...e decision in the future, after he realizes the priesthood is not for him. Joyce finally gives Stephen’s character a strong psychological state in order to work through his troubles and to see past the once ostentatious idea of living for others instead of living for himself.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has its idiosyncrasies throughout, but James Joyce manages to present an entire transformation through random thoughts and imagery. Stephen Dedalus embodies the coming to age story with his urges to commit sinful acts, yet tries to remain pious in order to pursue his dream of becoming a priest. The use of imagery and symbolism throughout the novel serve as reliable mediums for maturation, without convoluting the overall theme with indecipherable meanings.
Works Cited
Joyce, James. A Portrai of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin Books, 1993.
There comes a moment in every person’s life, when toys are no longer playthings but are merely nuisances, when you worry more about finding a job than you do about that new phone, and when your dreams of Santa and the Tooth Fairy begin to fade. In the stage in which every young adult experiences this metamorphosis, somewhere between the ages of ten and eighteen, the choices you make shape your future. In the case of David Strorm, protagonist in John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids, the choices he is forced to make are a bit more extreme than normal, but the same principles still apply. David must realize his true identity and how it varies from the society he grew up in, must find differences between his father’s views and his own, and, in the end, must accept that the world he knows isn’t as safe as he thought. Throughout the novel, as David Strorm matures and has to face many difficult choices, he becomes a more harsh and bitter character.
The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is widely recognized by New Critics as one of the greatest novels of its age for its aesthetic artistry. In the Portrait, a powerful autobiographical novel of bildungsroman, commonly known as a coming-of-age story, that follows the life of Irish protagonist Stephen Dedalus, Joyce portraits his momentous transition to adulthood as a passage of psychological struggle towards his ultimate philosophical awakening and his spiritual rebirth as an artist. Most visibly in Chapter Four of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, after the denial of his own priesthood, goes on to seek his artistic personality through his secluded journey amongst a myriad of natural elements. Dramatizing the Stephen’s progression towards his artistic revelation, Joyce deployed numerous image patterns that together insinuate the spiritual transformation of Stephen Dedalus into an “impalpable imperishable being” out of the earthly body of which he is composed of (Joyce 108). Specifically, Stephen’s intellectual transfiguration is largely connected with the symbolic connotations of the clouds depicted throughout his journey, which alludes to his transcending soul, wafting across the celestial heaven yet hovering intimately close to the earth that he belongs.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Viking Press, New York: 1964.
8. Rice, Thomas Jackson. James Joyce: Life, Work, and Criticism. Frederiction: York Press LTD., 1985.
In the novel's opening story, "The Sisters," Joyce elevates this concern with writing "reality" from sub-theme to theme: the story is an extended meditation on textuality just as much as it is the story of a boy and a priest. By beginning with a metatext Joyce brilliantly opens up the entire collection for a different kind of reading, one based on noticing rather than overlooking literature's limitations. With...
The first component mentioned by Erikson is the notion of intimacy which is shown through the relations taking place between the main character of Artist and his sexual partners in his adolescence. In the novel the main character, Stephen, begins as a young catholic boy who is then put through school and as his family begins to lose money he must be removed to a less expressive school so his father can continue to pay the tuition fees for his education. Stephen becomes increasingly embarrassed by his family situation and the ...
Stephen's childhood in the convent and with his family is shaped around conformity. Phrases such as "Pull out his eyes / Apologise / Apologise / Pull out his eyes" continually insist on the strict code of behaviour that Stephen is expected to uphold (4).
In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus feels confined by the nagging presence and rigidity of his family, the Catholic Church, his Irish nationality and his social class. In order to free his soul and express himself as the artist he knew he was, Stephen had to break away from these social institutions. The journey Stephen takes, follows the narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and shares similarities with the mythical character, Daedulus’s life.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, the author of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, was once described by a friend, Constantine Curran, as "a man of unparalleled vituperative power, a virtuoso in speech with unique control of the vernacular." While Constantine viewed Joyce's quality of verbal abuse "powerful," and praised his "control" of the language, many viewed this expressive and unrestrained style of writing as inappropriate and offensive. A dramatic new step for modernism, Joyce used language, style, and descriptions of previously unwritten thoughts and situations which stirred the cultural norm, thus sparking controversy over what was necessary and acceptable in literature.
The women which Stephen comes across in his journey in becoming an artist define him and change him by nurturing him, fascinating him, and inspiring him. Stephen was forever changed by his mother, the Virgin Mary, Eileen, the prostitute, and the seaside woman. The object of the artist is to create the object of the beautiful, I argue that it was the beauty in the women of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which created the artist in the end.
As Stephen grows, he slowly but inexorably distances himself from religion. His life becomes one concerned with pleasing his friends and family. However, as he matures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin.
Even as a young boy, Stephen experienced rejection and isolation at school. On the playground Stephen "felt his body [too] small and weak amid the [other] players" (Joyce 8). His schoolmates even poked fun at his name. In response to his rejection by the other boys Stephen makes a conscious decision to "[keep] on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect" and the other boys. Stephen is later depicted as choosing the "warm study hall" rather than the playground with his friends outside (Joyce 10). His rejection at school leads him to isolate himself in his schoolwork, thus putting himself on a scholarly path that will give him the intellectual skills necessary for the artist within him to achieve adulthood.
Stephen's relationship with the opposite sex begins to develop early in his life. Within the first few pages of the novel lie hints of the different roles women will...
Stephen's Journey to Maturation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: New American Library, 1991.