Stephen's Character and Aesthetic Theory in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

Submitted to:

Aroop Saha

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Stamford University Bangladesh

Submitted by:

Halima Tabassum

ID: ENG 063-07441

Department of English

Stamford University Bangladesh

1
 Dedication

I would like to dedicate my thesis to my Supervisor—

Aroop Saha

whose love, affection, encouragement, and blessings of days and

nights have always been a source of inspiration for me.

2
 Declaration

I certify that the work presented in this dissertation is my original work to the best of my

knowledge and belief. The contributions of other sources and information have been

acknowledged wherever they have been used. I, hereby, declare that I have not submitted

this material, either in a whole or part, previously or concurrently in this or any other

institution.

Signature:

Halima Tabassum

ID: ENG 06307441

November, 2021

3
 Acknowledgement

First, I would like to thank almighty Allah for completing my Thesis paper on time and for

giving me the physical and mental strength. I immensely thank my thesis supervisor Mr. Aroop

Saha for her supportive guidance and precise responses. Without her support and guidance, it

would have been very difficult for me to complete the thesis on time. I would like to thank my

friend Shamima Sultana for helping me out spontaneously, especially for the progression of this

paper. I would like to thank some of my closest friends: Farzana Miti, Asma Ul Hosna, Sharoar

Hossain, and many more for their mental support. I want to thank the participants who took part

in my research section. I would also like to show my respect and love towards my parents and

cousins for their support and encouragement.

4
 Abstract

Stephen Dedalus showed that Joyce tried to capture the insufficiency of self-awareness and

freedom in his life, which comes into contact with universal feelings of detachment, guilt, and

awakening. The result's the relationships that are supported wrong factors and consequently

rather than shaping a brand new possibilities, results in loss, failure, and destruction. Through the

novel, by close looking, it becomes obvious that reality is totally different from what appears

within the story and therefore the mind of Stephen. Stephen chooses to be an artist because he

wants to be free from all the foundations and regulations. He escapes from this material world by

using wax wings, which is symbol of his free soul. We will see all of that despair, loneliness, and

feeling of guilt, which happen to him, because he's ineffectual to just accept others. So he

tortures himself by exile and jailing within an imaginary fence so as to be off from others. He

experiences a form of exile, silence, and cunning which shows nationality and non secular of

him.

Keywords: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus, Stephen's

aesthetic theory, exile, loneliness, guilt.

5
 Table of Contents

Sections Titles Page

Number
Dedication 2

Declaration 3

Acknowledgement 4

Abstract 5

Title 7

Chapter 1 Introduction 8-10

1.1 Research Objective 10

1.2 Research Question 10

Chapter 2 Literature Review 11-14

Chapter 3 Research Methodology 14-17

3.1 Qualitative Research 15-16

3.2 Quantitative Research 16-17

Chapter 4 Findings 18-19

Chapter 5 Conclusion 20

Work Cited 21

6
Stephen's Character and Aesthetic Theory in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

Halima Tabassum

Stamford University Bangladesh

7
 Chapter 1

Introduction

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, became one all told the foremost important

writers that we've ever known. He was the son of a genius but an incompetent father who is

described exactly by "Stephen Dedalus" in an exceedingly Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

as someone who is appeared within the story because the protagonist and antihero, who is " the

chief person in the modern novel whose character is widely discrepant from that of traditional

protagonist or hero. instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power or heroism, the antihero,

like Stephen Dedalus in Joyce's work, is petty, ignominious, passive, clownish, or dishonest"

(Abrams, 2009, p. 10).

As we see during the story that how he becomes petty by the words of his College friends

in chapter one, because of his name and rank. When Joyce was a baby, Ireland had been under

British rule since the sixteenth century, and tension between Ireland and Britain had been high.

Additionally to political strife, there was religious tension between Catholics, the majority of

Irish, and Protestants. James Joyce's whole education from age six to nine was at Clongowes

Wood College and from age eleven to the age sixteen at Belvedere College in Dublin was

Catholic. As he studied in Clongowes Wood College, in his early youth, he was very religious,

but in a very year to his graduation from Belvedere, he began to reject his Catholic faith which is

why he saw himself as involved in rebellion and exile. despite everything the problems that

happen to him, Joyce, by writing a series of stories which engraving with remarkable lucidity

aspects of Dublin life, began his job as a successful writer. Like Stephen, his fictional hero,

Joyce in his youth felt restrained by the pressures of religion and politics, and limited and spare

8
interests which surrounded him in Ireland during the nineteenth century. Because of the

restricted atmosphere, in 1904 at age twenty-two, unfortunately, he left his family and also the

Church of Rome of Dublin, which he was interested in during his childhood, for becoming an

honest writer to Europe.

Thereafter he remained removed from his nation and family, with brief exceptions, for

the rest of his life. By viewing his style of writing, we encounter that the bulk of Joyce's work

contains the planning started as a stream of consciousness, which leads the reader to a particular

character's thoughts and insights as the reader visualize. In another word, he, by using a stream

of consciousness, can see the character's mind. Roman and mythology, Catholic religion, and

Indo-European language are integrated with Joyce's work. In most of his works, including

Ulysses, the simplest novel of the nineteenth century, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man, an autobiographical novel, compulsion with the above-mentioned mythology is found

easily.

9
1.1 Research Objectives:

▪ To find out the connection between the "artist" and "young man" of Stephen Dedalus'

character in “A Portrait of the artist as a young man”.

▪ To find out Stephen’s difficult moral and aesthetic choices that help to define his

character.

1.2 Research Questions:

▪ What is the connection between the "artist" and "young man" of Stephen Dedalus'

character in “A Portrait of the artist as a young man?”

▪ How does Stephen make difficult moral and aesthetic choices that help to define his

character?

10
 Chapter 2

Literature Review

Stephen Dedalus is that the "artist" and "young man" of the title. it's impossible to

contemplate him within the way that a reader would consider most characters in fiction, for his

roles go far beyond that merely of the central character. he's the only real focus of the book, and

also the events of the novel are filtered through his consciousness. The character relies on Joyce

himself. The name "Stephen Dedalus" itself has symbolic significance. Saint Stephen was the

primary Christian martyr, put to death for professing his beliefs. In Greek mythology, Daedalus

was an inventor who escaped from the island of Crete using wings he had made; however, his

son Icarus flew too near the sun, melting the waxen wings and crashing into the ocean. From the

novel's opening page, it’s clear that Stephen is sensitive, intelligent, and curious. He also proves

to be aloof and arrogant and self-important. Despite his intelligence, he's often the victim of his

self-deception. Joyce's narrative isn't continuous, and there's no "plot". Rather, the book could be

a series of "portraits" of Stephen at various important moments in his young life, from his

introduction as an infant ("baby tuckoo") through selected schoolboy experiences to his

declaration of artistic independence as a student at University College, Dublin. the method of

Stephen's maturation is registered in his expanding awareness of the globe and therefore the

novel's an increasingly sophisticated use of language. His relationship along with his family,

schoolmates, teachers, friends, religion, and country, and his language forms the essence of this

novel. During a series of epiphanies and corresponding anti-epiphanies, Stephen alternately

affirms and rejects different aspects of his existence. He makes difficult moral and aesthetic

choices that help to define his character. Perhaps the foremost telling characterization of him

occurs during the episode set in Cork. Here, Joyce describes Stephen as "proud and sensitive and

11
suspicious, battling against the squalor of his life and also the riot of his mind." within the last

chapter Stephen confides to his friend Cranly that he will henceforth depend on "the only arms I

allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning." Given the originality of James Joyce's

conception of this character, it's significant to notice that the book ends not with Stephen himself

but with excerpts from his diary that show his intention to "go to encounter for the millionth time

the fact of experience and to forge within the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my

race."

A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man is one amongst the foremost notable works of

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. The novel deals with the expansion of an artist, Stephen

Dedalus, who is additionally the central character of this novel. Within the last chapter, the

reader comes across his idea of “Aesthetics.” The word “Aesthetic” means ideas concerned with

beauty or the appreciation of beauty. Stephen develops his ideas on aesthetics supported Aristotle

and Aquinas. The ultimate chapter of the novel release showing Stephen going out of the house

annoyed and frustrated wandering through rainy Dublin roads, he quotes poems and worries the

aesthetic theories of Aristotle and Aquinas. We see two Latin quotations of Aquinas. The

primary one means, “Those things are beautiful the perception of which pleases”. The second

means, “The good is that toward which the appetite tends.” We all know that Aristotle may be a

famous Greek philosopher and St. Thomas may be a renowned philosopher of the center Ages

that they had significant contributions to aesthetic theory.

12
 Stephen asserts three propositions on aesthete:

I. Art is a stasis brought about by the formal rhythm of beauty.

II. Art or beauty, divorced from good and evil, is akin to truth; therefore, if truth can best be

approached through intellection, beauty or art is best approached through the three stages of

apprehension.

III. The three qualities of beauty that correspond to the three stages of apprehension are, in the

terms of Aquinas, integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance).

Stephen questions the religious and sexual desires of the human soul and defines these as

“kinetic”. By the end of chapter 2, in the arms of the prostitute, the “movement” reaches its

climax; and the second part reaches its climax at the end of chapter 4, with the static joy at the

sight of the girl on the beach. The conflict between these two becomes a practical example of

Stephen’s theory of kinetic and static effects. Ultimately, Stephen sees both sexual and religious

desires as kinetic, towards which appetite ends to seek fulfillment outside itself. On contrary, the

satisfaction of the aesthetic appetite is static; it is something that satisfies or pleases in itself; it

does not move the individual to the acquisition of something or someone outside the self.

Art should not be didactic. Art is the realm of creation, so it is related only to the good

and perfection of the work produced. Thus, it remains outside the scope of human conduct and

its limits, rules, and values which are attributed to “men”. Art always strives towards perfection,

therefore it is always good. On the other hand, the artist’s decisions are ethically vulnerable. Art

is always right, and if it ever seems to fail, it is because the artist has failed his art. The artist

must be moral in creating his art because art is specific to human beings rather than being a

mechanical production.

13
 Stephen’s theory is bound up with the three cardinal aesthetic principles; integritas,

consonantia, and claritas of Aquinas. Integritas is the perception of the aesthetic image as one

thing. Consonantia is the symmetry and rhythm of structure and claritas is given the approximate

meaning of radiance.

Chapter 3

Research Methodology

I am using the methodology and in the methods section have described the rationale for

the application of specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select, and analyze

information applied to understanding the research problem, thereby, allowing the reader to

critically evaluate a study’s overall validity and reliability. The writing I used was direct and

precise, and everything was written in the past tense. Importance of a Good Methodology

Section: I must explain how I obtained and analyzed his results for the following reasons. In my

methodology, you need to know how the data was obtained because the method I choose affects

the findings and, by extension, how I likely interpreted them. The methodology is crucial for any

branch of scholarship because an unreliable method produces unreliable results and, as a

consequence, undermines the value of my interpretations of the findings. In most cases, there are

a variety of different methods I could choose to investigate a research problem. The

methodology section of my paper clearly articulates the reasons why I choose a particular

procedure or technique. The method had been appropriate to fulfilling the overall aims of my

study. For example, I need to ensure that I have a large enough sample size to be able to

generalize and make recommendations based upon the findings. I gave importance to provide

14
sufficient information to allow other researchers to adopt or explicate my methodology. This

information is particularly important when a new method has been developed or innovative use

of an existing method is utilized. The methodology is concerned about both how the research is

carried out its structure and process, as well as how this information is analyzed.

The two approaches to research are:

1) Qualitative- based on methods which are said to be humanistic

2) Quantitative- based on the methods used in the natural sciences

3.1 Qualitative Research:

Qualitative Research is concerned with opinions, feelings, and experiences describe social

phenomena as they occur naturally no attempt is made to manipulate the situation - just

understand and describe understanding is sought by taking a holistic perspective/approach, rather

than looking at a set of variables qualitative research data is used to help us to develop concepts

and theories that help us to understand the social world - which is an inductive approach to the

development of theory, rather than a deductive approach that quantitative research takes - i.e.

Testing theories that have already been proposed. Qualitative data is collected through direct

encounters i.e. through interview or observation and is rather time-consuming.

In the research process, data can be collected through observation.

Observation: Observation involves may take place in natural settings and involve the researcher

taking lengthy and descriptive notes of what is happening. It is argued that there are limits to the

15
situations that can be observed in their 'natural' settings and that the presence of the research may

lead to problems with validity.

We can categorize research into two types, such as;

1. Primary Research: Primary research is defined as factual, firsthand accounts of the

study written by a person who was part of the study. The methods vary on how

researchers run an experiment or study, but it typically follows the scientific method. One

way you can think of primary research is that it is typically original research.

2. Secondary Research: Secondary research is defined as an analysis and interpretation of

primary research. The method of writing secondary research is to collect primary

research that is relevant to a writing topic and interpret what the primary research found.

For instance, secondary research often takes the form of the results from two or more

primary research articles and explains what the two separate findings are telling us. Or,

the author may have a specific topic to write about and will find many pieces of primary

research and use them as information in their next article or textbook chapter.

3.2 Quantitative research:

Quantitative research is used to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or

data that can be transformed into usable statistics. It is used to quantify attitudes, opinions,

behaviors, and other defined variables and generalize results from a larger sample population.

Quantitative Research uses measurable data to formulate facts and uncover patterns in research.

Quantitative data collection methods are much more structured than Qualitative data collection

methods. Quantitative data collection methods include various forms of surveys – online surveys,

16
paper surveys, mobile surveys and kiosk surveys, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews,

longitudinal studies, website interceptors, online polls, and systematic observations. Used to find

out how much, how many, how often, to what extent. Aims to be objective and scientific in its

approach. Quantitative research is hypothetic-deductive in its approach to constructing social

theories. Aims to assess and measure. Is regarded as a way to get to the truth, to understand the

world well enough so that we might predict and control it through identifying cause and effect

relationships. Quantitative research can be administered by the researcher, self-administered,

one-to-one group, face-to-face, telephone, postal, email.

In this research, I have used the qualitative method. It is a secondary data collection

process. The sources of the secondary data collection process were publications, research studies,

and journals. My literature review also includes my own opinion, and feelings.

17
 Chapter 4

Findings

In the application of our qualitative research under thematic analysis, the full novel

divided into five chapters, and also the fifth chapter is that the aesthetic concept. The dean's

inability to grasp Stephen's use of the word "tundish" could seem quite a minor detail, but it

symbolizes the clash of cultures that's at the middle of land experience. The dean is English and

represents to Stephen all the institutional power and prestige England has wielded throughout its

colonial occupation of eire. The dean is thus a representative of cultural domination. By failing

to grasp Stephen's word—which springs from Irish instead of English—the dean reminds us of

the linguistic and cultural divide between England and Ireland. With sadness and despair,

Stephen reflects that this divide could even be unbridgeable, and his disappointment underscores

the discontent he already feels for stale university life. The episode with the dean shows Stephen

importance of making his language, because country, he has been using isn't his own. He realizes

that English "will always get on behalf of me an acquired speech. i've got not made or accepted

its words. My voice holds them cornered." Joyce reinforces this idea of speaking someone else's

language throughout the novel through repeated uses of quoted speech from a diffusion of

external sources.

The opening lines of the novel, for example, are a child's story told by somebody else.

Later, we discover Stephen frequently quoting Aquinas and Aristotle. Yet despite these constant

citations, no quotation marks are utilized within the novel, sometimes making it difficult to

inform the difference between a personality borrowing someone else's words and a personality

speaking in his or her voice. The "tundish" episode with the dean shows Stephen the need of

18
creating this distinction and thus the importance of making a particular and truly Irish voice for

himself. Joyce also uses these sections to explore the contrast between individuality and

community. On one hand, Stephen is now more of a free-floating individual than ever before.

His links together with his family, whose sinking income and carelessness repel him, are weaker

than ever. His mother is disappointed with the changes university life has caused in her son, and

his father calls him a "lazy bitch." There seems to be little parental pride or affection to offset

Mr. Dedalus's hostility. Moreover, Stephen's social life is hardly any less solitary. He fails to

share the ideological position of any of his friends: he cannot adopt Irish patriotism of Davin or

the international pacifism of MacCann. Even the flattering adulation of Temple fails to inspire

Stephen.

Therefore, having given up hope on family, church, friends, and education, Stephen

seems to be more alone than ever. This assessment is simply partly true, however, as Stephen

isn't completely isolated within the novel. His family repels him, but he continues to work out

them and speak to them, and his warm address to his siblings shows that he still has family ties.

Furthermore, even when composing epitaphs to dead friendships, Stephen is surrounded by his

friends and interacts with them in an exceedingly very lively and outgoing way. The proximity of

such human relationships is very important, as Stephen retains a sturdy commitment to his

society until the very end of the novel, even when dreaming of fashioning a replacement soul for

him.

19
 Chapter 5

Conclusion

The study of the most character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses,

Stephen Dedalus, showed that Joyce tried to capture the insufficiency of self-awareness and

freedom in his life, which comes into contact with universal feelings of detachment, guilt, and

awakening. The result's the relationships that are supported wrong factors and consequently

rather than shaping a brand new possibilities, results in loss, failure, and destruction. Through the

novel, by close looking, it becomes obvious that reality is totally different from what appears

within the story and therefore the mind of Stephen. At the top of the novel, he understood that

everyone the ways which he had gone, was wrong and invaluable so thereafter he decides to

form himself ready for what he belongs to. He chooses to be artist because he wants to be free

from all the foundations and regulations. He escapes from this material world by using wax

wings, which is symbol of his free soul. We will see all of that despair, loneliness, and feeling of

guilt, which happen to him, because he's ineffectual to just accept others. So he tortures himself

by exile and jailing within an imaginary fence so as to be off from others. He experiences a form

of exile, silence, and cunning which shows nationality and non secular of him. This story may be

a reasonably symbolic, allegorical one which is autobiography of the author.

20
 Work Cited

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/portrait-artist-young-man

https://skemman.is/handle/1946/17807?locale=en

https://www.jkcprl.ac.in/download/11567161592.pdf

https://sites01.lsu.edu/faculty/voegelin/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2017/09/McPartland-

Aesthetic-Epiphany-and-Transcendence-in-Joyce.pdf

https://www.bl.uk/works/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271027484_Study_of_Stephen_Dedalus_the_main_pro

tagonist_of_A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man

http://gazetteupdate.blogspot.com/2018/08/aesthetic-theory-given-in-portrait-

of.html#:~:text=Stephen's%20theory%20is%20bound%20up,the%20approximate%20meaning%

20of%20radiance

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics,

2004. Print.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Penguin Modern Classics, London, 2000

Joyce, J. (1991). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Signet Classic.

Magalaner, M. (1956). Joyce: the man, the work, the reputation. New York: New York UP.

21