This document provides an overview and analysis of James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". It summarizes the plot, which follows the life and intellectual development of the main character Stephen Dedalus from childhood to young adulthood. It also outlines some of the major themes in the novel like innocence and experience, religion and freedom. Key symbols like music and bats are mentioned. Stylistic techniques used by Joyce like stream of consciousness are also highlighted.

2. A PORTRAIT
OF THE
ARTIST AS A
YOUNG MANB Y
“J A M E S J O Y C E ”

3. PRESENTED TO
MAM HABIBA NAWAZ
PRESENTED BY:
 ALIZE KHAN
 SAIMA GUL
 SIDRA SAFDER
 IRUM ZAFAR
 KAUSAR
 AZRA
 MEHREEN
 BUSHRA
 AHMED KHAN

4. THE BOOK
JAMES JOYCE’S “A PORTRAIT
OF THE ARTIST AS A
YOUNG MAN” IS A SEMI
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
NOVEL FOLLOWING THE
ADVENTURE AND
THOUGHT PROCESS OF A
YOUNG IRISH BOY
THROUGH HIS GROWTH
INTO A THOUGHTFUL
YOUNG MAN

5. EPIPHANY
Epiphany, a moment in which a character makes a sudden, profound realization—
whether prompted by an external object or a voice from within—that creates a
change in his or her perception of the world.
STYLISTIC TECHNIQUES USED:
MODE OF NARRATION
Stream of consciousness technique’.
In literature, stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes in words
the flow of thoughts in the minds of the characters

6. M O D E R N I S M
With the publication of A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man,
James Joyce became recognized
as one of the most important
modernists shaping the future of
literature.
Modernism is a style of writing
that writers and other artists used
with trends such as symbolism,
expressionism, imagism, and
surrealism.
Modernists rejected 19th century
realism, and remained disengaged
from mainstream thought and
values, and to present their
readers with complex new forms.

7. T H E M Y T H O F
DA E DA LU S A N D
I C A R U S
Daedalus is a brilliant
inventor—the Thomas
Edison of his day. ...
Desperate to flee the
island, Daedalus uses wax
to build some wings for
himself and his son Icarus.
Daddy Daedalus warns his
son to fly at a middle
height: the seawater will
dampen the wings and the
sun will melt them. He flew
too close to the sun, his
wings melted, and he fell to

8. Plotoverview
A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is made up of
important episodes in Stephen’s life.
 Chapter One: Stephen’s childhood; first hints of
disillusionment with his country, church, and family.
 Chapter Two: Stephen’s adolescence; sexual awakening;
further disillusionment, especially with his father.
 Chapter Three: Stephen is 16. His remorse over his sexual
activities leads him to try to re-connect with the church.
 Chapter Four: The now-pious Stephen, in his late teens,
realizes he is living in an inauthentic way and sees his calling
not as a priest of the church but as “a priest of the
imagination.”
 Chapter Five: As a young university student, Stephen
develops his artistic theories and realizes he must leave
Ireland, which is stifling him.

9. MAIN CHARACTERS
Stephen
Dedalus
Afflicted with poor eyesight and lacking both
physical stamina and athletic prowess
Stephen develops an early, introspective,
intellectual curiosity.
Like many sensitive young men, Stephen is
ashamed of his family's ever-strained finances.
Stephen feels himself becoming increasingly
isolated from others.
Finally, he vows to escape all forms of emotional,
intellectual, and spiritual repression.
He leaves Ireland for the Continent, in search of
his artistic soul.

10. MAIN CHARACTERS
Simon
Dedalus
Stephen's father, an impoverished
former medical student with a
strong sense of Irish patriotism.
Sentimental about his past, Simon
Dedalus frequently reminisces
about his youth.
Mary
Dedalus
Stephen's mother and Simon Dedalus's
wife.
Mary is very religious, and argues with her
son about attending religious services

11. MAIN CHARACTERS
Emma Clery
• Stephen's beloved, the young girl to whom he is fiercely attracted
over the course of many years.
• Stephen constructs Emma as an ideal of femininity, even though
he does not know her well.
Charles Stewart
Parnell
• An Irish political leader who is not an actual character in the novel, but
whose death influences many of its characters.
• Parnell had powerfully led the Irish National Party until he was
condemned for having an affair with a married woman.
Mr. John
Casey
• Simon Dedalus's friend, who attends the Christmas dinner at which young
Stephen is allowed to sit with the adults for the first time.
• Like Simon, Mr. Casey is a staunch believer in Irish nationalism, and at the dinner
he argues with Dante over the fate of Parnell.

12. Themes BODY AND SOUL
INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
LITERATURE AND LIFE
ORDER AND SENSE
RELIGION, NATIONALITY AND FREEDOM

13. Symbols
MUSIC
BATS

14. THEMES
BODY
AND
SOUL:
The gap between soul and body means a great deal to
Stephen during childhood and adolescence.
As a child, Stephen notes countless particular sights, sounds, and
smells, and interprets them with great tenderness and seriousness
they seem to lead him deep into his memories and his
understanding of the world.
n this way, body and soul are naturally connected for Stephen as a
child.
But Stephen also shies away from many social activities, preferring
to keep to himself and attend to his thoughts and daydreams
he distinguishes between extroverted activity, in which his body
interacts with others, and introverted activity, in which his soul
communes with itself.

15. THEMES
Innocence and Experience
Ideas of innocence and
experience, of change and
maturation, are central to
every novel that narrates an
artist’s growth and
development of
which Portrait is one.
In Joyce’s novel, the theme of
innocence and experience
structures the remaining four
themes, because in each case
the novel traces the child-to-
adult arc of Stephen’s shifting
perspective.
That is to say, when we talk
about Portrait we are always
talking about the evolution
from innocence to experience.

16. THEMES
Literature
and Life
Since earliest childhood, novels and poems
help Stephen make sense of the world around him.
From the very first scene of the novel, in which infant
Stephen creates a little rhyme from Dante’s threat
that “eagles will come and pull out his eyes,” words
shape and brighten Stephen’s experience.
At times, beautiful phrases from poems thrill him as
much as real romantic experiences.

17. THEMES
Order
and the
Senses
During his childhood, Stephen lives by
his senses
he understands the people and things
around him only by the way they look,
sound, smell, or feel.
The novel suggests that to child
Stephen, his mother is her good smell,
and nighttime is the chill of the sheets.

18. THEMES
Religion,
Nationality,
and
Freedom
Stephen grows up in an atmosphere of political and religious
controversy.
The late 19th century was a turbulent time in Ireland.
The beloved separatist leader Parnell, exposed as an adulterer
and condemned by the Catholic Church in 1891, divided the
nation just as he divided the Dedalus Christmas dinner in the
novel.
When he turns away from religion, he feels a soaring sense of
freedom.

19. SYMBOLISM
Music
• Stephen often evokes music to describe the intuitive, mysterious loveliness of certain
experiences
• the sound of the gas pipes at Clongowes is a song, the wheels of the train to Cork beat
out a rhythmic music, the words in poems sound out melodies, memory itself is like
music.
• Music also signals moments of transition and discovery; a simple melody turns Stephen
away from the priesthood and reminds him of his artistic ambitions.
Bats
• Bats seem, to Stephen, to represent something essential about the conflicted, dark,
mysterious Ireland of his childhood.
• He does not make the comparison entirely clear, yet he refers to it several times,
with strong feeling:
• he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he belonged flitting like bats
across the dark country lanes,”