The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Priest or Pervert? Are there no other choices?

James Joyce  Fin de Siecle  The Great War  Irish Independence  The Interwar Period

James Joyce  Father-John Stanislas-impoverished and failed businessman  Mother-Mary Murray-10 years younger than husband-accomplished pianist- fervent Roman Catholic  1888-Clongowes Woods-Jesuits  1893-Belvedere College-Dublin  1898-University College-Dublin

James Joyce  Lyric poetry-- When we Dead Awaken- Ibsen  Graduation—Paris--journalist, teacher, poverty  Mom dies, Trieste, Paris with Nora Barnacle  WWI--Zurich  Interwar-Paris, glaucoma-Zurich in 1940

Works  Dubliners-1914  Portrait-1914  Exiles-1918  Ulysses-1922  Finnegan’s Wake-1939

Reinvention of the Novel  Bildungsroman  Kunstroman  Veiled autobiography  Roman-fleuve  Radical reinvention of the novel

Dominant Motifs  Symbols/Allusion/Motifs  Religion  Art  Nature  Animals  Body parts  Politics  Mythology

Themes  Family, Religion, Culture--The Irish may have saved civilization, but...  The Roman Catholic Church  Nationalism  The Jesuit schools--Clongowes Woods, Belvedere  The University--Modernism  The Artist as mystic/priest

Characters in Portrait  Fr. Arnall  Athy  John Casey  Uncle Charles  Fr. Conmee  Cranly  Simon Daedalus  Mrs. Daedalus  Stephen Daedalus  Dante Riordan  Davin

Characters  Fr. Dolan  Emma  Fleming  Mike Flynn  Vincent Heron  Lynch  MacCann  Bro. Michael  Aubrey Mills  Temple  Eileen Vance  Wells

Interpretive Issues  How much is faithful autobiography?  How much is idealized autobiography? (Stephen Hero)  Ironic distance--Mature distance  Icarus/Daedalus/labyrinth  Epiphany--girl wading, swallows, Welcome, O Life!  Aesthetic Theory--Aquinas idea of Beauty-- integrity, symmetry, radiance

Interpretive Issues  Women  Romantic/Courtly ideal--Emma  Brothel/Nighttown  Mercedes  Transfiguration or Guilt--Goddess or Whore  Virgin Mary  Means of Artistic revelation

Interpretive Issues  Ireland--Ireland as labyrinth  Ireland as dominated by foreigners  The two Empires--Great Britain/Rome  Jesuits as extraterritorial aliens  Wolfe Tone and Charles Parnell  Priesthood as metaphor  Language--Irish, invented, Latin

Metaphors  Music--theater, study at Belvedere, concertina, University as music, means of artistic realization  Labyrinth--Icarus, Daedalus, Minos, wings, escape and freedom as goal  Jesus Christ, Napoleon, Parnell, Count of Monte Cristo, Dante, St. Stephen, Lucifer, Prometheus

Motifs  Animals--cow, dog  Birds--Heron, the eagles, birds above the library, the wading girl  Light and darkness, sight and blindness  Flowers--courtly image, neo-platonic image, green rose, white rose, red rose  Green-Red dichotomy  Specifically Roman Catholic images

Conclusion  The Artist  Classical  Romantic  Modern