intro to a portrait of the artist

7/27/2019 Intro to a Portrait of the Artist

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An Introduction toA Portrait of the Artist

as a Young Man

Based on Hugh Kenners introduction


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Narration

The narrator is different than expected. Not first

person- no I. So it must be third person, but third-

person narrators are supposed to be reliable; they

give us the truth; they dont tend to talk about

moocows and hairy faces in childish ways; they donttend to evolve as the protagonist grows and develops

adding literary sophistication each chapter. So why?

Why would Joyce choose to do this? Who is

narrating? What does an evolving (thereforeimperfect) narrator suggest?


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A Good Editor

The first draft was 913

pages and 25 chapters

long. The entire finished

product took 10 years tocomplete


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Rembrandts Painting A Portrait of the

Artist as a Young Man


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Rembrandt would fix his gaze in the mirror to the

world behind the mirror as he painted. Joyces use

of the title may suggest the following chiasmic

structure:

Background Painter Mirror Painters Image Background Image

Dublin Joyce Stephen Dublin


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Chiasmus

Biblical Poetry Structure

ABBA or ABCCBA or ABCDDCBA A mirrorimage.

Portrait is riddled with chiasmus, (Apologise, pull

out his eyes, pull out his eyes, Apologise.) Even the structure of the novel itself is chiasmic.

(Parts two and four both end with images ofwomen; parts three and five end with men.) I

In the center of the middle chapter lies the

passage: The preacher took a chainless watchfrom a pocket within his soutane and, havingconsidered its dial for a moment in silence, placedit silently before him on the table.


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Silence

Could it be silence at the center? Time?

Some combination of the two? What is the

mirror? (Joyce used silence as a chiasmic

center in Finnegans Wake)Are books inherently silent? How does a book

compare to a painting? Which one is more

silent? What other reasons might he have

chosen to fixate on silence? Why are weasking so many questions? What time is it?

Where are my car keys?


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Developmental Progress

Progression of senses in chapter one:

Hearing: the story

Sight: the fathers face

Taste: lemon platt Touch: warm and cold

Smell: the oilsheet

Why are they in this order? What is thesignificance of their development?


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Development of Gradation:

First warm then cold

His mother had a nicer smell than his father

Uncle Charles and Dante were older than his fatherand mother but Uncle Charles was older than Dante

The Vances lived in number seven. They had adifferent father and mother. They were Eileens fatherand mother.

When I grow up Ill be a father, when she grows up,shell be a mother.

When he was grown up, he was going to marryEileen

Why does Joyce highlight this relationship-orienteddevelopment?


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Male/Female Chapters:

Odd-numbered chapters appeal to afather. Even-numbered chapters end withwomen


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Women

Chapter two ends with Stephen s loss of virginity to ananonymous harlot. Chapter four ends with Stephen looking ata girl standing in the water, alone and still, gazing out to sea.Right after he has realized that the priesthood is not for him.

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still,

gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic hadchanged into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird.Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a cranes andpure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioneditself as a sign upon her flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft huedas ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white

fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft whitedown. Her slate blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waistand dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a birds softand slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish,and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.


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Female Analysis

Notice how he creates her. He doesnt just describeher; he fashions a beautiful creature from the bottomup as he looks at a real-life girl being natural. Whycreate a bird-like creature? How might this tie to themythology to which he is attached? Why did he take

great pains to give her the body of a bird, but thenuse girlish twice before describing her hair andface? Also, we see here Joyces ability to mirror therush of a juvenile crush- the overstatement andrhapsodizing of a teenager (a talented teenager, but

still obviously young.) Is he romanticizing her (asGretta Conroy in The Dead?) or is he seeing awoman as she truly is for the first time (epiphany)?


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flight


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James Joyces Father

Get toknow me!


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The Male Figures

The last line of the book is a diary entry of Stephens

written on the eve of his departure from Ireland to

Paris. It reads:

Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever

in good stead. Compare to John 17:5 And now,

Father, do thou exalt me at they own side from the

Vigil of Ascension Day where the Son addresses the

Father.

and compare to the section in chapter 4


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Now as never before, his strange name seemed to him aprophecyNow, at the name of the fabulous artificer, heseemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see awinged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing

the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening apage of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, ahawklike man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy ofthe end he had been born to serve and had been followingthrough the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of

the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggishmatter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishablebeing?

Daedalus


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Has Stephen selected a substitute father? Is he speaking to theGreek Daedalus, or Simon Dedalus, his father, in the finalentry? If he is speaking to the Greek, what is the tyrannizedisland from which he is fleeing? Who or what is the drownedIcarus? Why the allusion to a Biblical father and son? What

might that suggest about the relationship? What about the firstline of the book and the moocow present in it? His father toldhim about the moocowcompare to the wooden cow built byDaedalus- the one that started his woes. And what about allthe other Fathers he will encounter: Father Dolan beats him, he

protests to Father Conmee, a nameless father delivers ascathing sermon that has Stephen confess to anothernameless Father? So at the end of the book when he speaks tothe unnamed Father- are we correct to assume that it is hisown biological father?

Fathers


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James Joyce at age 2

Im alreadysmarterthan you.


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Joyce at age 6

How do youlike me now?


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With his Buddies at School
http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/JJ_class.html


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Clongowes schooloriginally a castle


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Clongowes Wood College


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Joyce at

Graduation


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Joyce at 22


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Dead?


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The Mino taur. Jan Parker (b.1941).


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The Minotaur

George

FrederickWatts , 1885.

Tate Gallery,

London.


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Theseus slaying the Minotaur. Stamnos by the Kleophrades Painter, c.500-450 BCE. British Museum, London.


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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,Approximately 1580. Hans Bol


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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558. Pieter Bruegel


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Daedalus watch es Icarus Fall

Solis designed 178 woodcuts in all for this version of the Metamorphoses.


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intro to a portrait of the artist

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