Work record
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
1916 · Early 20th Century · Novel · English
Abstract
Background. Joyce recast an abandoned long draft, Stephen Hero, into a compressed account of his own Jesuit schooling and university years, finishing it in Trieste. Ezra Pound placed it in a London little magazine before an American publisher took it.
Plot. A child at a Kildare boarding school becomes a Dublin schoolboy as his family sinks into debt. Adolescent sin is followed by a terrified return to the sacraments after a retreat, then by a period of fervent devotion. Offered the priesthood, the youth turns away; at university he argues about beauty, quarrels over faith and plans to go abroad. A family Christmas torn apart by the Parnell split, an unjust beating at school and a wading girl on the strand mark the turning points.
Style. Each chapter climbs toward a moment of crisis and then falls back. The narrative voice matures with the protagonist, borrowing his vocabulary at every stage, and the closing pages shift to first-person journal fragments.
Themes. Vocation, the claims of family, Irish politics and Catholicism on a young mind, sin and repentance, the making of a personal aesthetic, and flight as both escape and danger.
Significance. A founding text of literary modernism, it introduced the protagonist who returns in Ulysses and reshaped the English novel of growing up. Its title page epigraph from Ovid names the myth that governs the whole design.
Main characters
- Stephen Dedalus: Young Dubliner who chooses art over priesthood and country
- Simon Dedalus: His genial, declining father
- Dante Riordan: Devout aunt who denounces Parnell
- Father Arnall: Jesuit who preaches the retreat
- Cranly: Closest university friend
- Davin: Nationalist student from the country
- Lynch: Skeptical listener to Stephen's aesthetics
Summary
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man follows Stephen Dedalus, a boy from a Catholic Dublin family, from his earliest memories to the eve of his departure from Ireland at about twenty. Its five chapters are written in a style that grows with him, from the nursery language of the opening, in which his father tells him a story about a moocow and baby tuckoo, to the abstract arguments and private diary of the last chapter. In Chapter I Stephen is a small, nearsighted boy at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school. He is shouldered into a cold ditch by an older boy, falls ill and is sent to the infirmary, where he imagines his own death and hears of the death of Parnell. Home for Christmas, he watches the dinner dissolve into a bitter quarrel over Parnell between his devout aunt Dante Riordan on one side and his father Simon Dedalus and Mr. Casey on the other, ending with Mr. Casey's sobs for his dead king. Back at school, after his glasses are broken, the prefect of studies Father Dolan pandies him unjustly, and Stephen goes alone to the rector, Father Conmee, who promises it will not happen again. Chapter II traces the family's slide into debt, removals to Blackrock and to poorer houses in Dublin, Stephen's schooling at Belvedere College, a trip to Cork with his father to sell family property, and his growing restlessness. At sixteen, wandering the streets at night, he goes with a prostitute. In Chapter III the school holds a retreat in honor of St. Francis Xavier. The preacher, Father Arnall, describes death, judgment and the torments of hell at great length; Stephen, terrified, makes his confession in a Capuchin chapel and receives communion. Chapter IV shows him living a life of strict devotion and mortification of the senses. The director of Belvedere invites him to consider a vocation to the Jesuit priesthood; Stephen declines. Walking on the strand at Dollymount, he hears schoolfellows call his strange name, Dedalus, and sees a girl wading in the sea, and he feels called instead to art and life. Chapter V, at University College, presents Stephen in talk with his friends Davin, Lynch and Cranly. He explains to Lynch a theory of beauty drawn from Aquinas, composes a villanelle, refuses his mother's wish that he make his Easter duty, and tells Cranly that he will not serve what he no longer believes in, but will express himself through silence, exile and cunning. The book ends with diary entries as he prepares to leave, calling on his namesake, the old artificer. The novel was serialized in The Egoist in 1914–15 and published in book form in New York by B. W. Huebsch in December 1916.
Virtues in this work
- Justice: Pandied unfairly by Father Dolan, the small Stephen walks alone down the long corridor to tell the rector, who sets the wrong right.
- Piety: After the retreat Stephen confesses in the Capuchin chapel and orders each day of Chapter IV around prayer and the sacraments.
- Friendship: Cranly listens patiently to Stephen's doubts in Chapter V and urges him to consider his mother's love before refusing her request.
Plot or Argument
- Chapter I: Clongowes and the Christmas dinner
From the moocow story to Clongowes Wood College: the cold ditch and the infirmary, the Christmas dinner quarrel over Parnell, the broken glasses, Father Dolan's pandybat and Stephen's appeal to the rector.
- Chapter II: Decline and the city
The family's money troubles and moves, Belvedere College, the Whitsuntide play, the trip to Cork with his father, the squandering of prize money, and his first visit to a prostitute.
- Chapter III: The retreat
Father Arnall's sermons on the four last things, especially hell, bring Stephen to terror and remorse; he confesses to a Capuchin priest and receives communion.
- Chapter IV: The call and the refusal
Stephen's rigorous devotions; the director's invitation to the Jesuit priesthood and his refusal; the vision of the girl in the sea at Dollymount and his sense of a different vocation.
- Chapter V: University and departure
Conversations with Davin, Lynch and Cranly; the theory of beauty from Aquinas; the villanelle; the refusal of the Easter duty; and the closing diary of March and April as he prepares to leave Ireland.
Characters
- Stephen Dedalus, protagonist
Sensitive, proud, intellectually gifted young man who passes from fervent faith to a vocation as an artist.
- Simon Dedalus, father
Charming, improvident Cork man whose fortunes and family decline.
- Mary Dedalus, mother
Devout mother who prays for her son and grieves at his loss of faith.
- Dante Riordan, aunt
Fiercely religious governess figure who sides with the bishops against Parnell at the Christmas dinner.
- Mr. Casey, family friend
Nationalist friend of Simon Dedalus who weeps for Parnell.
- Father Dolan, prefect of studies
Jesuit at Clongowes who pandies Stephen for supposedly breaking his glasses on purpose.
- Father Conmee, rector of Clongowes
Kindly rector who listens to Stephen's complaint.
- Father Arnall, Jesuit and preacher
Stephen's former teacher, who preaches the hell sermons at the Belvedere retreat.
- Cranly, friend
University friend and confidant to whom Stephen explains his refusal to serve.
- Davin, friend
Countryman and Irish nationalist who urges Stephen to put Ireland first.
- Lynch, friend
Irreverent student who hears Stephen's theory of beauty.
- E—— C——, beloved
Young woman, named only by initials, who stirs Stephen's poetry and his self-doubt.
Lessons
A style that grows with its hero
Joyce tells Stephen's story in language that matches his age: baby words in Chapter I, schoolboy slang, the overwrought prose of adolescent passion, the sermon's rhetoric, and the cool abstraction of the university arguments. The form itself is a portrait of a developing mind.
- How does the language of the opening pages differ from that of the diary at the end?
- Where does the narration take on the voice of the people around Stephen?
- Why might Joyce have chosen this method rather than an older narrator looking back?
Family, nation and church at one table
The Christmas dinner of Chapter I shows the forces Stephen will spend the book weighing: a Catholic faith loyal to the bishops, an Irish nationalism grieving for Parnell, and a family whose love is real but quarrelsome. The child watches without understanding what he will later call nets.
- Why do Dante and Mr. Casey quarrel so fiercely over Parnell?
- How does the dinner affect Stephen, and what does he remember of it?
- Can loyalty to family, country and church ever conflict?
Fear, repentance and its limits
The retreat sermons of Chapter III move Stephen to genuine repentance and confession, and he gives himself to a rigorous devotional life. Chapter IV shows that devotion becoming anxious and exacting before he turns away from the priesthood. Readers have disagreed about whether Joyce portrays Stephen's later choice as liberation, as pride, or with irony toward both.
- What in Father Arnall's sermon most terrifies Stephen?
- Why does Stephen decline the director's invitation to the priesthood?
- Is Stephen's final refusal to serve an act of courage, of pride, or both?
The vocation of the artist
Stephen's name joins the first Christian martyr and Daedalus, the craftsman of Crete who made wings to escape the labyrinth. The vision of the girl on the strand, the theory of beauty and the final diary entries all build his sense of being called to make something new.
- What does the name Dedalus mean to Stephen in Chapter IV?
- What are the three qualities of beauty Stephen takes from Aquinas?
- What does Stephen mean by forging the uncreated conscience of his race?
Context
The book is set between about 1891 and 1902, years shaped by the fall and death of Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, after the divorce case of 1889–90 led the Catholic bishops to oppose him. Irish nationalism, the Gaelic revival, the Catholic Church and Jesuit education form Stephen's world. The novel draws heavily on Joyce's own life at Clongowes, Belvedere and University College, though Joyce shaped and compressed the material.
Composition
Joyce wrote an essay called A Portrait of the Artist in 1904 and then a long autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero, which he abandoned; a surviving portion was published after his death. He reworked the material into the present five-chapter novel between about 1907 and 1914, dating the ending Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914. Ezra Pound arranged its serial publication in The Egoist in London from February 1914 to September 1915. Printers' objections delayed book publication until B. W. Huebsch issued it in New York in December 1916; the Egoist Press edition followed in London in 1917.
Reception
Early reviewers were divided between admiration for its truthfulness and objection to its frankness, and H. G. Wells praised it in a 1917 review. It is now read as a central work of modernist fiction and as a model of the Künstlerroman, the novel of an artist's growth. Critics have long debated how ironic Joyce's view of the young Stephen is, a question sharpened by Stephen's less heroic reappearance in Ulysses.
Comparisons
- confessions
Augustine's account of a boyhood of sin, a mother's prayers and a decisive turn toward God is the great model of the spiritual autobiography that Stephen's story echoes and reverses.
- metamorphoses
The novel's epigraph comes from Ovid's Book VIII, where Daedalus turns his mind to unknown arts and makes wings for himself and Icarus.
- apologia-pro-vita-sua
Stephen admires Newman's prose, and Newman founded the Catholic University that became Stephen's college; Newman's account of his religious opinions moves toward the church that Stephen leaves.
- the-divine-comedy
Father Arnall's hell sermon belongs to the same tradition of imaginative meditation on the last things as Dante's Inferno.
- eliot-the-waste-land
Published in the same year as Joyce's Ulysses, Eliot's poem shares the modernist method of fragments, allusion and shifting voices that the Portrait begins to develop.
- david-copperfield
Dickens's novel of a boy's growth into a writer is a Victorian ancestor of the Portrait; Joyce replaces Dickens's retrospective narrator with a style that grows with the hero.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road”
Frequently cited
“When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
Frequently cited
“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”
Frequently cited
“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.”
Frequently cited
“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
“Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; yet he fell”
“A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea.”
“Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The changing style from the moocow opening to the diary at the end.
- The Christmas dinner quarrel over Parnell and the pandying by Father Dolan in Chapter I.
- Father Arnall's sermons and the figure of Lucifer in Chapter III.
- Images of birds, flight and water, especially the girl at Dollymount in Chapter IV.
- Stephen's conversations with Davin, Lynch and Cranly in Chapter V.
Key terms and names
- Parnell
- Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader whose fall after a divorce scandal divided families like the Dedaluses; he died in October 1891.
- Pandybat
- Leather strap used by Jesuit schoolmasters to strike boys' hands; Father Dolan uses it on Stephen.
- Retreat
- Days of sermons, silence and prayer held at Belvedere in honor of St. Francis Xavier, ending in confession.
- Non serviam
- Latin for I will not serve, the words the preacher gives to Lucifer's sin of pride, which Stephen later takes up for himself.
- Dedalus
- Stephen's surname, after Daedalus, the mythical craftsman who built wings to escape Crete.
- Integritas, consonantia, claritas
- Wholeness, harmony and radiance, the qualities of beauty Stephen draws from Aquinas in his talk with Lynch.
- Content note
- Recommended for upper high school with guidance: Chapter II ends with a visit to a prostitute, Chapter III contains long descriptions of hell, and the book traces a young man's loss of faith.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What happens at the Christmas dinner, and who takes which side?
- Comprehension Why is Stephen pandied by Father Dolan, and what does he do about it?
- Comprehension What vocation does the director offer Stephen in Chapter IV, and how does he respond?
- Interpretation Why is the hell sermon so effective on Stephen, and why does its effect not last?
- Interpretation What are the nets Stephen tells Davin he will fly by, and why does he see them as nets?
- Interpretation How seriously does Joyce want us to take Stephen at the end: as a hero, or as a gifted young man with much to learn?
- Big Question Does the artist owe anything to his family, his country and his faith?
- Big Question Is it possible to refuse to serve anything at all?
Faith Connections
- Isaiah 14:12-15 (Scripture)
The fall of Lucifer, son of the morning, who said he would ascend above the stars of God, underlies Father Arnall's sermon on pride and Stephen's own refusal to serve.
- Luke 15:11-32 (Scripture)
Stephen's flight into the streets in Chapter II and his tearful return to confession in Chapter III follow the pattern of the prodigal son, though the novel does not end with the homecoming.
- Augustine, Confessions II and VIII (Church Fathers)
Augustine's adolescent sins, his mother's prayers and his conversion in the garden make a sharp counterpoint to Stephen, whose mother also prays for him as he moves the other way.
- Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 8 (Great Conversation)
Aquinas names integrity, proportion and clarity as the conditions of beauty; Stephen borrows the triad for his theory of art while setting aside the theology in which Aquinas placed it.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: Stephen reasons that because family, nation and church each demand his service, and because he no longer believes what they ask him to serve, he must free himself from all three in order to make art, using silence, exile and cunning; the novel sets this conclusion before the reader without settling whether it is wisdom or pride.
Rhetorical device: free indirect discourse. Throughout the book the narration takes on Stephen's own vocabulary at each age, from the moocow of the first line to the rapturous prose of the girl in midstream in Chapter IV.
Debate: Resolved: that Stephen Dedalus is right to leave Ireland.
Memory Work
Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Trace the images of flight and falling, from Lucifer in Chapter III to Daedalus in the final line, and argue what they suggest about Stephen's choice.
Comparison with Confessions: Compare Stephen's story with Augustine's: two young men, two praying mothers, and two decisive turns. What does each turn toward, and why?
Medical Lens
Medical material is incidental but telling. In Chapter I the small Stephen, chilled after being pushed into the square ditch, falls feverish and is sent to the Clongowes infirmary under Brother Michael, where he imagines his own death and funeral. His poor eyesight leads to the broken glasses and the pandying. The hell sermons of Chapter III describe bodily torment in vivid physical detail, and Stephen's terror, nausea and sleeplessness follow. The exacting devotions of Chapter IV, in which he mortifies each sense and keeps count of his prayers, have been read by some later readers in terms of religious scrupulosity; that is an interpretive reading, and within the novel's own Catholic world scruples were a recognized spiritual difficulty addressed by confessors. In Chapter II, on the trip to Cork, Stephen sees the word Foetus cut into a desk in the anatomy theatre of Queen's College where his father studied medicine.
- Chapter I
Stephen's fever after the ditch, the infirmary with Brother Michael, and his imagined death and the news of Parnell's death.
- Chapter III
The retreat sermons on death and hell and Stephen's physical terror and remorse afterwards.
- Chapter IV
Stephen's systematic mortification of the senses and his anxious accounting of prayers and temptations.
Creative Prompts
- Essay
Compare the Christmas dinner of Chapter I with Stephen's conversation with Davin in Chapter V: how has his relation to Irish nationalism changed?
- Fiction
Write a diary entry by Stephen's mother for April 26, the day she puts his secondhand clothes in order.
- Classroom
Read the opening page and the final diary aloud side by side and list the features of style that have changed.
Further Reading
- Dubliners, James Joyce
Joyce's 1914 stories of Dublin life, including early sketches of the city of the Portrait.
- Stephen Hero, James Joyce
Surviving portion of the earlier, longer draft, published posthumously.
- James Joyce, Richard Ellmann
The standard biography, which traces the book's roots in Joyce's youth.
- My Brother's Keeper, Stanislaus Joyce
Memoir by Joyce's younger brother of their Dublin childhood.
Verification notes
Full text is Project Gutenberg #4217, complete in five chapters with the closing dateline Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914. All eight quotes were found by search in the stored text and keep its punctuation; Joyce's dashes for dialogue are retained in the file. Serialization in The Egoist (February 1914 to September 1915) and the Huebsch edition of December 1916 are standard facts. The scrupulosity reading in the medical lens is interpretive. Abstract country reflects composition in Trieste, then in Austria-Hungary.
- Confirm the date of H. G. Wells's review (usually cited as The New Republic, March 1917).