What is the meaning of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man?
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel by the Irish modernist
writer James Joyce. It follows the intellectual, moral and spiritual development
of a young Catholic Irishman, Stephen Dedalus, and his struggle against the
restrictions his culture imposes. Portrait can be placed in the tradition of
the bildungsroman – novels that trace the personal development of the
protagonist, usually from childhood through to adulthood. Joyce contrasts the
rebellion and the experimentation of adolescence with the sombre influence of
Stephen’s Catholic education. For example, his startled enjoyment of a sexual
experience in chapter two is followed by the famous ‘Hellfire sermon’ in
chapter three which leaves him fearing for his soul. The name Dedalus links
to Ovid’s mythological story of Daedalus – the ‘old artificer’ – and his son
Icarus, who flies too close to the sun. We are reminded of this image when
Stephen tells his friend Davin: ‘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’.

Though the technique used in much of the novel’s narration can be described
as ‘stream-of-consciousness’, some critics complain that this term tells us little
about the effect it achieves. Joyce traces Stephen’s various stages of
development, by adjusting the style of his language as his protagonist grows
up. From the baby-talk of the opening, to the high-minded aesthetic
discussion towards the end, Joyce’s language play mimics Stephen’s
phonetic, linguistic and intellectual growth. By the end of the novel, Stephen
has resolved to follow his calling as an artist and to leave Ireland in order to
‘forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race’.

In many respects, the novel represents Joyce’s own artistic development, and
Stephen plays out fictionalised versions of many of his author’s experiences:
the episode surrounding the death of the disgraced Irish home-rule leader
Charles Stuart Parnell has many similarities with the arguments this event
caused in the Joyce household.

The novel was serialised in the modernist magazine, The Egoist, between

1914 and 15, starting on 2 February (Joyce’s 32nd birthday), and printed as a
complete book in 1916 in the US and in 1917 in the UK (though the editions
are dated 1916).
Why should I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

“Portrait” is about this, a young man's soul, and what makes

Joyce's novel so magical, what makes it essentially literary, is
that his conquest of what belongs to the individual alone —
what is special, and to Joyce's mind unique about Stephen
Dedalus — is also a conquest of what belongs, and is unique,
to each of us.

What is the central idea of A Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man?

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become

an artist. Stephen's decision at the end of the novel—to leave his family and
friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist—suggests that
Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure .