AP English
Mr. Neff
Neff Notes on Joyce’s Portrait1
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Pub. 1916
Leading example of literary modernism (see handout on modernism and
style in modernism)
Example of a Bildungsroman: a novel about the moral and psychological
growth of its protagonist
o And more specifically, Portrait is a Kunstlerroman: a novel about
the growth and development of an artist
Set in Ireland in late 19th century, semi-autobiographical novel about the
education of a young Irishman, Stephen Dedalus (allusion to
Daedalus/Icarus), whose background has much in common with Joyce’s
S.’s education includes his formal schooling but also his moral,
intellectual, and emotional development as he observes and reacts to the
world around him.
o Central to this development is S.’s rejection of his Roman Catholic
upbringing and his growing confidence as a writer
Portrait is Joyce’s first novel and attempt to create a new kind of novel that
does not rely on conventional narrative techniques of Realist fiction that
came before it
Portrait is an autobiographical novel (much of Stephen is Joyce’s
representation of himself in the earl y years of his life, and many of S.’s
events parallel Joyce’s own life), but it is still a work of fiction and thus
Joyce has taken creative liberties. It covers roughly 1890 through the end
of the century.
(following is from enotes): “Rather than telling a story with a coherent plot
and a traditional beginning, middle, and end, Joyce presents selected
decisive moments in the life of his hero without the kind of transitional
material that marked most novels written up to that time. The ‘portrait’ of
the title is actually a series of portraits, each showing Stephen at a
different stage of development…although this story is told in a third-person
narrative, it is filtered through Stephen’s consciousness [stream of
consciousness]…the book can be read as Joyce’s artistic manifesto and a
declaration of independence…from what Joyce considered the restrictive
social background of Catholic Ireland and from the conventions that had
previously governed the novel as a literary genre (a movement from
Realism to Modernism, the latter of which it is considered a central
example).
CONTENTS of this guide
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
1
2-3: Style and Structure; Symbolism
4-6: Chapter Notes
7-8: Characters
9: Myth of Daedalus and Icarus
10-11: Joyce and Stream of Consciousness
Compiled from Enotes, my own notes, and other teachers’ notes
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Mr. Neff
STYLE and STRUCTURE
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3rd person narrator, but unlike traditional 3rd omniscient due to Joyce’s use
of stream of consciousness and interior monologue. Rather than tell what
is happening, he attempts to show what is happening by representing
Stephen’s experiencing of events. Additionally, Stephen argues that
events in the past, when they happened, were not experienced as past but
as present and that a narrative should therefore try to recapture the “fluid
succession of presents” that this implies. Final version of Portrait—basic
principle, tightly episodic structure, 5 chapters, 19 episodes, represent
“present.” Technique is almost like cinematic montage, also highly
attentive to its linguistic medium, written in “fluid succession” of prose
styles appropriate to the boy’s maturing consciousness: as Stephen
matures, the language and focus of the novel itself matures and changes
with him.
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Stream of Consciousness narration (see end of this document)
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Novel is structured around Stephen’s epiphanies; Stephen and Joyce
believe that the purpose of the artist is to record and present these
moments of spiritual insight.
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Title = the conundrum of a self-fulfilling prophecy—the novel is an
autobiographical portrait of the novelist who produced it—Stephen may
have become the “artist” Joyce by the very act of painting his own portrait.
Joyce’s artist = a reader as much as he is a writer, a consumer as much
as he is a producer of art; among what he does produce, in final cpt of
novel, kind of literary theory which he calls his “esthetic.” In this he forms
bridge between ordinary experiences of the reader the exceptional
experience of the artistic producer. Reader may in a direct way seem
engaged in the process of portrayal, which may, in turn, make him into a
kind of ‘artist” too.
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Mixing material from his own life with portraits of the lives of other artists,
Joyce’s novel charts the new territory of secular imaginative writing and
culture that the high Victorians are proposing as an alternative means of
social cohesion and self-discovery to that traditionally supplied by
established religion. Describes and defines for us the new subject of
English Literature.
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SYMBOLISM and MOTIFS
 The five senses (Stephen relies on them, especially in chapter 1, and Joyce
considered them to be indispensable tools for the artist), of which sight is most
prominent, including the fear of its loss, literally and figuratively: “the eagles will
come and pull out his eyes”.
 Religious symbolism: various elements of Roman Catholicism, including the
sacraments of communion and confession.
 Bird symbolism: “the eagles…” as mentioned above; Stephen’s friend and rival
Heron (a bird of prey); Stephen later thinks of himself as a “hawklike man”
(solitary bird; observes world from great height but remains outside of it)
 Color symbolism (red and green)
 Skull, water, bridges, kisses…
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Mr. Neff
CHAPTER NOTES
 Each chapter addresses a different theme in Stephen’s development as
an artist. Additionally, within each chapter there are several self-contained
episodes or “portraits”; each episode centers around or culminates in an
epiphany, often occurring during otherwise trivial incidents. These
epiphanies are undercut by anti-epiphanies: moments of disillusionment
that bring Stephen back to earth. Each shift between epiphany and antiepiphany is accompanied by a shift in the tone of Joyce’s language; the
epiphany scenes generally contain poetic, elevated language, and the
anti-epiphanies generally contain the less noble aspects of life.
1. Open—small boy’s experience in prerational, almost prelinguistic state,
thoughts = feelings;
2. experiences as 9 year old, succession of typical school scenes, narrated in
similarly naïve style of simple observations and sensations – intriguing mixture of
thoughts and feelings—naming, identity, the nature of the universe, God, politics
Political world impinges—Christmas dinner scene. From moment Parnell is
banished from Parliament and dies, for Ireland and Joyce—insurrectionary
violence became most likely future for Irish politics, Joyce’s best hopes for
personal and artistic freedom = exile
Cpt 2 – Stephen’s sexuality, dealing with lust. We hear about E___C___.
Stephen’s psychology is material force, traceable in its components, even at this
early stage, to his maternal affections, to fascination with figure of Virgin Mary, to
strong feelings of guilt (Dante, pandy-batting at school).
Stephen’s heresy—then he dares to call Byron a great poet, although others say
he is a heretic.
Stephen is eventually going to find writing a means of expressing his masculinity
and his identity, not means of escape from either or both, but he must emerge
from beneath the authorities that constrain him in order to achieve this selfexpression.
His “heretical” art of writing critical essays rather than his piously dedicated
poetry wins him his first rewards. $$ gives him his first sense of a place in
society, helps free him from dependence on family—now becomes a surrogate
breadwinner.
Cpt 3 – sin – pages of sermons close to Ignatius Loyola’s Counter-Reformation
SPIRITUAL EXERCISES—published in Dublin under title HELL OPENED TO
CHRISTIANS. Father Arnall does not stress sexual sins in first two sermons, but
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Mr. Neff
that’s what Stephen hears. Sermon 3 – terrifyingly detailed and extended
depiction of hell—not human tragic hell of Dante’s INFERNO but Sadeian
catalogue of extreme pains and tortures to which the damned will be subjected..
Stephen goes to confession—important as a liturgical symbol, also important to
Stephen’s development as a secular literary writer. Act of confession represents
linguistic as well as spiritual problem for him, and an alarming survival of way that
sexual guilt had been mobilized during the 19th C as a means of social control.
To confess he must put into words the bodily actions for which language—or at
any rate the sanctified languages he has learned in school—has no terms. To
put such actions into language itself seems to him to be potentially sinful: “To say
it in words! His soul, stifling and helpless, would cease to be.” The confession
“trickles” and “oozes” from him almost like a bodily fluid. The sensual immediacy
and sense of freedom in experiences is obscured by the official moralistic
language of the confessional—attempts to contain or deny.
Temporary conversion—framed by priest’s lecture references to time—a mystical
one of a perpetual present tense, far from spiritually liberating for St, whose
mental freedom up to this point has been based on his ability to remember and
imagine times past and future. (“Time is, time was but time shall be no more.”)
He then orders his life, super-strict organization of time, daily routine actions and
devotions.
Conflict between two modes of knowledge—fractal geometry in its theorizing of
chaos. Takes us to linguistic origins of the aesthetic as a concept or category.
AISTHESIS = those things which can be experienced by the body, through
feelings and emotions. PHYSIS = those things that can be understood only
abstractly, by reason alone.
Bird/girl – sexual object—remains dangerously idealized and mystified, same can
be said of her function as symbol of new age, new world of secular knowledge
that Stephen hopes to find in the University (Protestant) as alternative to priestly
vocation and religions belief. Against this “physics” he tries to establish his
aesthetic theory, responding not only to the dynamic of is own intellectual
development, also providing for deep-seated needs felt by both the student of
literature and by the noninstitutional reader to explore abstract questions of
literary theory. Theory locked within Aristotelian and Aquinan terms of reference,
value abstract classical order and symmetry over experiential and exploratory
forms of literary disruption.
Cpt 5 – Stephen’s literary theorizing in context of the increasingly divergent
political ideologies of contemporary Dublin. Davin, Gaelic League enthusiasm for
Irish nationalism by means of myth and Irish field sports; MacCann, struggle for
“social liberety and equality” by means of signing petitions; Dean’s fear that
Stephen’s speculations are dangerous; echoed by Cranley; Lynch listens to him,
presented as little more than a joker and cynic. Stephen’s austere and heroic
catchwords of cultural resistance and autonomy: “Silence, exile, and cunning.”
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Ending—diary—preeminently solipsistic type of writing, self-centered, formless,
proof of the incompleteness or even futility of his hopes. Provides just the right
note for conclusion of novel—On one level, another style in succession of stylistic
pastiches that have echoed Stephen’s progress thru book. Last cpt, process of
relaxation, almost dissipation, Stephen’s thoughts and in narrative structure (tight
order of Cpt3, climax I Cpt 4). Last entries = “welcome to life” determination to
“encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smith
of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Irish race he is leaving or new
race of cosmopolitan aestheticism which he is hoping to find—not clear. Final
entry, exuberance, with more sober appeal to Stephen’s mythic namesake or
secular-mystical “father,” Daedalus, some read as a premonition of his fall.
Implicit in entry is belief that the writer can and must create something entirely
new. Identity if predetermined by language and name. To encounter these and
other contradictions and to accept them where no simple resolution can be
achieved may be the role toward which Stephen is progressing, a stage of which
this diary form can best represent.
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Mr. Neff
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
I.
CHARACTERS
A. THE DEDALUS FAMILY
1. Stephen – son, hero/protagonist of the novel
2. Simon – Stephen’s father
3. May – Stephen’s mother
4. Maurice – Stephen’s younger brother
5. Uncle Charles – a relative who lives with the family until his
death
6. Aunt Dante (Mrs. Riordan) –the governess, her most important
part in the novel is at the
Christmas dinner, Cpt. 1
7. Katey, Maggy, Boody – Stephen’s sisters, vaguely referred to in
Cpt. II
B. CHARACTERS CLOSE TO THE DEDALUS FAMILY
1. Mr. Casey (John) – he attends the family Christmas dinner in Cpt. 1 and is
active in the political
Argument by defending the dead Irish leader Charles Stuart Parnell
2. Eileen Vance – Stephen’s childhood sweetheart
C. CLONGOWES WOOD COLLEGE (Cpt. 1)
STEPHEN’S TEACHERS AND MASTERS
1. Father Arnall – Latin teacher, later appears as retreat master,
Cpt. III
2. Father Dolan – prefect of studies, punishes Stephen in Latin
class with pandybat
3. Father Conmee – rector, Stephen goes to see him in the castle
4. Brother Michael – takes care of Stephen when he is sick in the
infirmary
5. Mr. Gleeson, Mr. Barret (Paddy), and Mr. Harford – teachers
STEPHEN’S CLASSMATES
1. Fleming – also punished by Father Dolan in Latin class
2. Jack Lawton – head of Lancaster team, competes with Stephen’s
team, the Yorkests
3. Nasty Roche – important because he questions Stephen about family,
odd last name
4. Wells – rough student, pushes Stephen into ditch of dirty water, makes
him ill
5. Athy – Stephen’s companion in infirmary, his father is race horse
owner
OTHER STUDENTS
Mentioned briefly – Rody Kickham, Cecil Thunder, Simon Moonan,
Hamilton Rowan, Dominic Kelly,
Tusker Boyee, Jimmy Wagel, Paddy Rath, Corrigan, Cantwell,
Aaurin
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1. Aubrey Mills – Stephen’s summer companion at Blackrock before he
enters Belvedere College
2. Mike Flynn – Stephen’s track trainer during summer at Blackrock
D. BELVEDERE COLLEGE (Cpts II, III, IV)
1. Vincent Heron – classmate, shares leadership at school with
Stephen
2. Wallis – Vincent Heron’s friend, appears night of school play
3. Bertie Tallon – boy who takes part in the play
4. Boland – classmate, calls Stephen “a dance”
5. Nash – classmate, calls Stephen “an idler”
6. Father Arnall – Jesuit priest, conducts 3 day retreat Stephen
attends
7. Mr. Tate – the English master
8. John Cashman – old cronie of Simon Dedalus’ – meet on trip to
Cork
E. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN (Cpt V)
1. Dean of Studies – English Jesuit priest, Stephen discusses
philosophy
2. Cranly – Stephen’s closest friend, confidant
3. Lynch – student who takes long walks with Stephen during
which SD explains his
Aesthetic philosophy
4. Davin – the “peasant student” ardent Irish nationalist
5. McCann – student heading the signing of the petition for social
equality and world peace
6. Temple – the “gypsy student” admires Stephen’s knowledge,
hates Cranly
Other students briefly named: Moynihan, MacAlister, Donovan, Dixon,
O’Keefe, Goggins,
Glynn, Shuley, Ennis, Connely
II.
STRUCTURE
A. 5 CHAPTERS – traditional, classic pattern, chronological development:
1 – babyhood and chronological development
2 – early adolescence, high school, romantic fantasies, introduction to
sex
3 – sermon on hell and heaven, Stephen’s confession
4 – mortification of the flesh, rejection of career as a Jesuit, decision to
become an artist
5 – college life, repudiation of family, country, religion preparatory to
assuming the obligations of a
“priest of the eternal imagination”
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AP English
Mr. Neff
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, James Joyce
The Myth of Daedalus and Icarus
Daedalus, an ingenious Athenian craftsman, having murdered a potential rival,
fled with his son Icarus to the island of Crete. There he was commissioned by King
Minos to design a labyrinth as a place of confinement for the monster Minotaur.
Daedalus contrived a labyrinth so intricate that escape from it was virtually
impossible. By falling into disfavor with the king, Daedalus himself, along with his son
Icarus, was eventually imprisoned there.
Not to be outdone, the “famous artificer,” Daedalus explained to his son
Icarus that, although their escape was checked by land and by sea, the open sky
was free. He devised two pairs of wings, and father and son immediately took flight
from Crete.
Daedalus warned his impetuous son not to fly too high lest the heat of the sun
melt the glue and his wings fall off. But Icarus, filled with a sense of power in his
flight, disregarded his father’s commands and soon his wings, heated by the sun, fell
off, and he plunged into the sea, the waters closing over him.
Daedalus means “the artful craftsman.” He symbolizes man’s inventiveness
and is credited with other inventions, such as the ax and the saw, in addition to
human flight. Icarus, on the other hand, illustrates the dangers which beset human
inventions. Daedalus and Icarus together indicate how contradictory and precarious
is the human condition: we are both resourceful and very vulnerable.
To rise above the earth is an ancient human dream or desire. You know
something of birds and their migrations, of the history of human flight, of air travel
and air raids, of rockets to the moon and air disasters, of the eagle that stands for
national sovereignty and the dove which symbolizes purity of spirit. This is a
fascinating and significant subject, but complex, difficult.
In Joyce’s symbolic language, Dublin is a modern labyrinth, a place of
confinement, from which Stephen must escape. To Stephen, the city represents a
shabby, dusty world of restraint and spiritual paralysis.
At times, Stephen is identified with the crafty inventor Daedalus (his
namesake), and at other times, with Icarus, the ill-fated rebellious son.
Think carefully about the several dimensions of the problem of human flight.
There is more to it than saying we need airplanes for transportation and for military
protection. Why, in your opinion, does man wish to rise above the earth? What is
up there in the nature of man that makes him want to fly always farther and faster
and higher? You may not be able to come up with final answers, but you should
clarify in your own mind the lure and the dangers of flying, and you should be able
to justify human flight.
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
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Mr. Neff
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
William James first used the phrase “stream of consciousness” in [1890] to
describe the ebb and flow of thoughts of the waking mind. Litcrit, terms “stream
of consciousness” and “interior monologue” both used to describe narrative
techniques that present multi-leveled flows of rational and irrational thoughts and
impressions uninhibited by grammar, syntax, and logical transitions. S-o-c
narratives categorized - 2 types: indirect and direct interior monologue.
Ulysses by James Joyce [1922] - many examples of s-o-c narration. Calypso
cpt, protagonist {Leopold Bloom), having left his wife in bed, slips into a s-o-c as
he goes to buy his breakfast. Observing everyday matters of weather, traffic,
and local [Dublin] landmarks, he thinks of his wife Molly, his father-in-law
Tweedy, their experiences in Gibraltar, and the funeral he shall attend later in the
day:
No. She didn't want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer,
as she turned over and the loose brass quoits on the bedstead jingled.
Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten
any little Spanish she knew. 0Wonder what his father gave for it. Old style. Ah
yes! of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as
nails at a bargain old Tweedy. Yes sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the
ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in
stamps. Now that was farseeing.
*
*
*
*
*
He cross to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number
seventy five. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm
day, I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts,
reflects, [refracts, is it?], the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a
picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy warmth.
Boland's breadvan delivering trays of our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves
turnover crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young...
This passage--indirect interior monologue; narrator occasionally interrupts the
flow of thoughts and impressions: "He cross to the bright side..." and "His eyelids
sank quietly..."
The Sound and the Fury [1929], William Faulkner uses direct interior monologue,
issues directly from an identifiable character source, to present the flow of
consciousness of a young man contemplating suicide:
Then the curtains breathing out of the dark upon my face, leaving the
breathing upon my face. A quarter hour yet. And then I'll not be. The
peacefullest words. Peacefullest words. Non fui. Sum. Non sum. Somewhere I
heard bells once. Mississippi or Massachusetts. I was. I am not.
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Massachusetts or Mississippi. Shreve has bottle in his trunk. Aren't you even
going to open it Mr. and Mrs Jason Richard Compson announce the Three
Times. Days. Aren't you even going to open it marriage of their daughter
Candace that liquor teaches you to confuse the means with the end. I am. drink.
I was not.
In Beloved [1987], Toni Morrison employs a direct interior monologue to present
the consciousness of a character who has been imbued with the racial memories
of African slaves chained to and packed in the hulls of ships crossing the Atlantic
Ocean:
All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not
crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching
the man on my face is death his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet but his
eyes are locked some who eat nasty themselves I do not eat the men without
skin bring us their morning water to drink we have none at night I cannot see the
dead man on my face daylight comes through the cracks and I can see his
locked eyes I am not big small rats do not wait for us to sleep someone is
thrashing but there is not room to do it in if we had more drink we could make
more tears
In this passage, the narrator presents a series of images, sometimes
unconnected by transitions, that float in time. As does Faulkner, Morrison
eschews the use of punctuation to suggest the random selection of images and
recollections.
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