A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Joyce, James, 1882-1941Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.8
Word count
462K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals World Classics Flight and HesitationArtist GrowthReligion and FaithInner MonologueStream of ConsciousnessGrowing UpYouth AwakeningModernismDublinYouth Thoughts

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JoyceAuthor: Joyce, James, 1882-1941,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 1, 2003

Editor's review

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a representative early modernist novel by Joyce, following Stephen Dedalus's growth and using shifting language styles to mirror the development of his consciousness and mind. From childhood sensation to academic debate to aesthetic reflection, language itself becomes the structure of growth, letting readers see directly how the narrative voice transforms as the protagonist matures. The work's value lies not in a busy plot but in its persistent inquiry into how an artist is made: how the layered pressures of family, religion, nation, and language are gradually recognized, resisted, and transformed into artistic material by a sensitive mind. While reading, note the changing density of language in each chapter and the rhythm of long passages such as sermons and aesthetic discussions. It is a good entry point to Joyce and the stream-of-consciousness tradition, and also suits readers interested in the bildungsroman and modernist narrative technique. The free public-domain ebook makes repeated close reading against the original easy.

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once to feel how the language style changes with age, then return to key passages for close reading.
  2. Slow down at long sermons or aesthetic discussions and mark the turning points of the narrative voice.
  3. Read alongside the English original and an annotated edition, noting stylistic differences between chapters.
  4. After finishing, trace the stages of Stephen's changing attitudes toward family, religion, and nation.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47

FAQ

Can I read this directly without having read other works by Joyce? Yes. This is one of Joyce's earlier long works; although its language already shows modernist features, it retains a clear through-line of growth and is often seen as one of the entry works for understanding his oeuvre. Reading it first makes it easier to grasp the origins of his language experiments in Ulysses.
How difficult is the language? The original's wording shifts with the protagonist's age and mind: early chapters are more sensory and childlike, while later ones contain much religious, political, and aesthetic discussion, with more long sentences and allusions. Non-native English readers are advised to use an annotated edition or a parallel translation and to read slowly in sections.
Who is the "artist" in the title? It refers to the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus; the novel follows his growth and portrays how a sensitive young man gradually forms his own artistic vision amid the competing claims of family, church, and nation. Much of the book is autobiographical, but it should not be simply equated with the author's biography.

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About the author

Joyce, James, 1882-1941 Author

James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish writer and one of the most important figures of literary modernism. Six of his works are included here: the novel Ulysses, the short-story collection Dubliners, the coming-of-age novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the poetry collection Chamber Music, the play Exiles, and an index of his Project Gutenberg works. Because public information is limited, his biographical details are not elaborated here. Joyce's writing is mostly set in Dublin and focuses on the daily lives and inner struggles of ordinary citizens, making use of interior monologue, stream of consciousness, and intricate structures, with a strongly experimental use of language. Ulysses maps a single day in the lives of its characters onto an ancient epic and has had a profound influence on twentieth-century narrative; Dubliners sketches a city through concise stories and offers a clear-eyed view of Irish society and culture.