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A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”
by James Joyce


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -1914, 1915- draws on many details from Joyce’s early life. The novel’s protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways Joyce’s fictional double. Like Joyce himself, Stephen is the son of an impoverished father and a highly devout Catholic mother. Also like Joyce, he attends Clongowes Wood, Belvedere, and University Colleges, struggling with questions of faith and nationality before leaving Ireland to make his own way as an artist. Many of the scenes in the novel are fictional, but some of its most powerful moments are autobiographical: both the Christmas dinner scene and Stephen’s first sexual experience with the Dublin prostitute closely resemble actual events in Joyce’s life.
In addition to drawing heavily on Joyce’s personal life, the novel also makes a number of references to the politics and religion of early-twentieth-century Ireland: the majority of...

Posted by: William Katz

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