English Seminar    James Joyce



A Portrait of the Artist

Some things to pay attention to



Chapter I:  memories of childhood, elementary school

Stephen's growing fascination with words and sounds, and with the correspondence between words, sounds, and 
objects; his interest in books; the light and dark; his initiation into the adult world of politics; Stephen's sense of 
injustice--why does Chapter I end with the story of his triumphant talk with the rector?

Chapter II:  adolescence--family moves to escape creditors

Stephen's growing sense of a)alienation, loneliness, and detachment, and b)the power of silence; his attitudes toward 
his father; also toward his mother; the search of his romantic imagination for the ideal, transfiguring woman (Eileen, 
Mercedes from The Count of Monte Cristo, B.V.M. = Blessed Virgin Mary, Emma Cleary, etc.).  How does this 
chapter end?

Chapter III:  wallowing in lust

Stephen's attitudes toward women and sex: sex vs. the idealized woman, lust vs. beauty, shame and guilt vs. 
repentance; his interest in technical religious questions; the nature of hell in the sermons; Lucifer's Fall as an act of 
self-exile and defiance: non serviam, I will not serve.  The chapter ends with repentance and spiritual renewal.

Chapter IV:  tries to choose a vocation--chooses art rather than priesthood

The power and secret knowledge of priesthood; Stephen's sundering from both father (and the "misrule of his father's 
house"-- Ireland?) and mother; his discovery of his priestly "vocation" as an artist (via the myth of Daedalus, Icarus, 
and the "fall"); the inspirational revelation of the bird-like girl on the beach.  Chapter IV ends with a discovery of 
vocation and purpose.

Chapter V:	at University--conversations about aesthetics-- decides to leave Ireland

a) Stephen's aesthetic theory and definitions (from Aristotle and his "applied Aquinas"): art and beauty; pity and terror; 
rhythm; wholeness, harmony and radiance, and the moment of apprehension of beauty, of inspiration--light, claritas, 
epiphany; lyric, epic and dramatic forms; the artist's indifferent and invisible personality, "refined out of existence" 
from the work.
 
b) Stephen's combat against the "three nets of language, nationality, and religion through "silence, exile and cunning"; 
his sense of isolation, his self-imposed silence; his growing sense of women (mother, Emma, etc.) as treacherous, as 
symbols of Ireland, the Church, and Irish treachery: "the old sow that eats her farrow."
 
c) Stephen's exile: his rejection of home, parents, Ireland and Church for art and the "priesthood of eternal 
imagination": he is the winged exile (in both senses of "flight"), the "hawklike man:" and "symbol of the artist" 
(Daedalus), the apprentice artificer (Icarus), both Icarus and Lucifer ("Brightness falls from the air" in both 
meanings of "fall"), the winged and defiant angel in Lucifer's non serviam.



Portrait --  General notes


Pay special attention, as you read, to the rich and intricate development of the following themes and motifs:


I.	[Light and vision]
a) Blindness, eyes, weak vision, darkness, blinding and pain, brightness falling, the blinding pain of hell vs. the 
blinding light of forgiveness and repentance.
b) Brightness and light as creative, epiphany, radiance and claritas, moments of imagination and inspiration, 
artistic creation, brightness of angels, brightness falling from the air, etc.

II.	The pervasive imagery of birds, winged creatures, and of flight:
a) as applied to young Stephen, to the mythic Daedalus ("hawk-like man," "fabulous artificer," "symbol of 
the artist"), to the artist, to flight and exile, to winged seraphs, to bright angels, to Lucifer and his Fall, 
to Icarus' flight, to Stephen as Icarus--the apprentice artificer learning how to fly.
b) as applied to Eileen Vance, to Emma Cleary, to angels, to the bird-like girl on the beach as an artistic 
muse and inspiration, to women and Ireland as "a race of bats."


III.	The Daedalus-Icarus mythic motif of escape from the Labyrinth (the "maze of Dublin) by the father teaching the 
son how to fly; the inadequacy of Stephen's father; other father-figures: the Dean of the college (priest as "Father") 
and his warning about falling "into the depths," religion and the Church, Cranly (in his role of confessor to Stephen, 
and as defender of Ireland and his mother); the search for a father, Icarus seeking a Daedalus to guide him through 
the maze.


IV.	Stephen's attitude toward women:

a) As something pure, to be worshipped, in the midst of ugliness: Eileen and the Blessed Virgin Mary 
("tower of ivory"), Mercedes and the search for the ideal woman, the girl at the beach, the villanelle to 
Emma, Dante's Beatrice and the "spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus"; the ideal woman as a muse 
for creativity.
b) As symbols of sin and destructiveness:
Women as sex, sin, lust, shame and guilt (for Stephen); the shame of kissing, and of his mother's kisses; 
women as traitresses (Emma's flirtations and "disloyalty," Dante and Parnell); women as a race of 0ats; 
women = mother = Church = Ireland = treachery = old sow that eats her farrow.




Dr. Victor Cheng
University of Southern California




Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist

One class meeting for each chapter of the novel.
Students read at least one chapter ahead of each class session.
(can draw comparisons with Great Expectations)

Portrait

5 chapters, each a different stage in development of Stephen -- each written in a different style, reflecting the (style ?)

#1	memories of childhood, elementary school

#2	adolescence - family moves to escape creditors

#3	wallowing in lust

#4	tries to choose a vocation -- chooses art rather than priesthood

#5	at University -- conversations about aesthetics - decides to leave Ireland

Author's attitude toward subject
	(in last chap. Stephen isn't particularly likable)

Portrait is stripped of all superfluities -- poetic compression
	no dramatic plot to follow
	symbolic themes:  young person learning to fly and be free
		Daedalus (father of Icarus) inventor of labyrinth and imprisoned there -- teaches himself to fly and flies out of 
prison - and teaches his son to fly

Dante is Mrs. Riordon (?)

Parnell and Irish politics
	Parnell was for reasonable approach to Home Rule
	was defeated by the scandal aroused after he was found having an affair with another woman -- then divorce

Christmas dinner scene:

     brings up conflicts: church, home, state

	o	conflict between what he has been taught and what adult authorities are doing

	o	conflict between his father and Mrs. Riordan, Dante, his governess

	o	Stephen, embryo of an artist -- is thrilled by the power of the spoken work

	o	learning of loyalty, treachery

Hellfire sermon in chapter 3:  vividness

	pp. 158-159:  the temptation of power which he would have as a priest

	p. 161 -- sin of pride (see p. 117) -- Stephen is closest to Lucifer here

Mercedes in The Count of Monte Cristo

Stephen's priesthood is of the imagination
	He preferred the warmth and disorder of real life to the ordered chill of the church priesthood


p. 169 -- very self-conscious, dramatic choosing of his vocation

p. 171 - first time a female is described as a whole beautiful woman -- of both madonna and whore qualities
 

