A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man will always be an inspirational book in the world of Post-Modernist literature. This book is one is which paved the road for books just like it, not only breaking free from the expectations of society but also warming our hearts by following the early stages of life of young Stephen Dedalus. This semi-autobiographical story is a symphony of subtle epiphanies, which are expressed through innate underlying structure, which only a true devotee to post-modernist literature could thoroughly enjoy. As we travel through Stephen's mind over the years, we encounter many signposts that foreshadow the conflicts that are to take place later on in the book. As early as eight or nine years of age, while spending his days being watched by his uncle (41-45), we start to see changes to a chapter in Stephen's life, where he will have to take a step into the unknown in order to go through to his life long desire of becoming an artist.
Although there are many previous scenes in this book that foreshadow Stephen's decision to choose the life of beauty over his strict Catholic upbringing, deep thought and desire should be taken into consideration, while Stephen bends down on one knee to pray with his uncle. (42) Stephen cannot comprehend for what reason his uncle is praying for and disrespects his piety by not having faith in his prayer. This scene has many different interpretations and is very strong in underlying context, while precisely symbolizing Stephen's upcoming rebellion against the church. While this thought of Stephen's is very
complicated and defined, it still maintains an aspect of innocence and curiosity that only a child could be capable of possessing. This is definitely what be an outsider's...
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age what he needs in order to life his life happily, he constantly finds himself in unfavourable dark situations, bringing out the irony of his story in full force, while he struggles to find his spotlight.
Amongst all the unfortunate happenings and wrong decisions Stephen had mad in the past, he is able to find hope when he sees the bird girl (123), while carrying his wreath as a symbol of his dying religion and faith. The beautiful woman on the beach renews Stephen's presence in the world and reinforces his decision he had made in the past, and gives him the consolidation he had been waiting a lifetime for. The series of subtle epiphanies draws out Stephen's life a he finally lets go of the dark burden around his body and transforms himself into an artist for the first time, being reborn into the world through the mirthless beauty of the bird girl's womb.
Watts, Steven. “The Young Artist as Social Visionary” The Romance of Real Life. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. pp. 49-70.
All of Camus' writings may be viewed as a quest for meaningful values in a world of spiritual aridity and emptiness. He begins with man's despair, estrangement, fear, suffering and hopelessness in a world where is neither God nor the promise that He will come- the fundamental absurdity of existence- but ultimately affirms the power of man to achieve spiritual regeneration and the measure of salvation possible in an absurd universe. This radical repudiation of despair and nihilism is closely bound up with his concept of an artist. Camus conceives of art as a way of embracing a consciousness of the absurdity of man's existential plight. But art becomes a means of negating that absurdity because the artist reconstructs the reality, endowing it with unity, endurance and perfection. By taking elements from reality that confirms the absurd existence, an artist attempts to correct the world by words and redistribution. Thus the artist never provides a radical transformation of reality but a fundamental reinterpretation of what already exists. He provides a new angle of vision of perceiving reality. That is why, for Camus, an artist is a recreator of myth. He teaches humanity that contemporary man must abandon the old myths that have become otiose, though once defined his existence. The artist liberates man to live in his world by redefining both man and the condition in which he exists. In this regard, it is important to point out that, for Camus, the traditional opposition between art and philosophy is arbitrary. It is because they together become most effective to create the redefinition: the philosophy awakens the consciousness and the art, propelled by such a radical discovery, ...
As the young boy grew, he began to have a love for art and wanted to become an artist, but his father, however, did not have a care of his son’s dreams, but instead wanted him to grow up, following in his footsteps; in which Adolf rebelled against.
When Stephen goes to Johannesburg he has a childlike fear for "the great city" Johannesburg. Khumalo's fears of his family are exactly the same as every other black person in South Africa. In the train he is afraid of living in a world not made for him. He opens his bible and starts reading it, this is one of Khumalo's great sources of alleviation. Gertrude is frightened that her life will now be exposed to her brother who is a priest. She is redeemed from this fear when she prays with Stephen. Stephen experiences great pain and fear during his search for Absalom, Msimangu comforts him, he gains comfort when plays with Gertrude's son, when he thinks of Ndotsheni, his wife and of rebuilding his home it consoles him.
The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly debates with art historians and researcher, and objecting to how they claim there is a general state of how art is read. She structures her paragraphs in ways that allows her to present different kinds of evidences from a variety sources while using a formal yet persuasive tone of voice to get her point across to the reader.
As the great Philosopher Nietzsche proclaims boys always resembles their father. Thus I have analyzed the similarities and the traces of parents on their off-springs. And literary creations of them seem to me that they are the mirrors of their real selves. As Oscar Wilde reveals in De Profundis: "Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol." (93) so art symbolizes man. And his art is the symbol of his personality just as Marius the Epicurian is the symbol of Walter Pater's. Consequently, art harbours not only readers and life but also the creators of them. In fiction, Words speak two times; one reveals plot, the other reveals author; whatever a literary men writes, he writes himself but nothing else...
Initially, Rios illustrates a young boy perplexed by a new-found maturity. As the maturation from childhood to adolescence begins, he is facing unfamiliar feelings about the opposite sex. An example of this is apparent as Rios explains that the boy cannot talk to girls anymore; at least “not the same way we used to” (Rios 453). Since his emotions have new depth and maturity, the young boy realizes the nature of his friendships has changed. Innocence is further lost as the girls who are former friends, “weren’t the same girls we used to know” (453). The boy has matured from his casual, youthful interactions, and is now seeing the girls in a new light. Another example of his maturity manifests sexually as he reflects about the girls, “and all the things we wanted to do with them” (454). Although he is unsure how to act upon his thoughts, the innocence is none the less tainted by his desires for mature relations with the young girls. The maturity and sexual maturity bring forth a storm of emotions that prove to be both exhilarating and confusing for the young boy.
Moreover, Quentin, unlike his brother Benjy, who understands reality without any abstraction, is a highly gifted and sensitive man. Hence, his monologue in section two is replete with his abstract and philosophical meditations on the nature of what he experiences, as his contemplation on time shows. From this perspective, Quentin is seen to be an alter-ego of Faulkner, as Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is that of Joyce. Through Quentin, Faulkner examines the possibility that artistic resources, particularly literary language, can capture life that is easily flawed with time into the ultimate truth “so that 100 years later when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” Quentin’s problem with time and his struggle to arrest the past fixed, in this sense, are Faulkner’s
The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is widely recognized by New Critics as one of the greatest novels of its age for its aesthetic artistry. In the Portrait, a powerful autobiographical novel of bildungsroman, commonly known as a coming-of-age story, that follows the life of Irish protagonist Stephen Dedalus, Joyce portraits his momentous transition to adulthood as a passage of psychological struggle towards his ultimate philosophical awakening and his spiritual rebirth as an artist. Most visibly in Chapter Four of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, after the denial of his own priesthood, goes on to seek his artistic personality through his secluded journey amongst a myriad of natural elements. Dramatizing the Stephen’s progression towards his artistic revelation, Joyce deployed numerous image patterns that together insinuate the spiritual transformation of Stephen Dedalus into an “impalpable imperishable being” out of the earthly body of which he is composed of (Joyce 108). Specifically, Stephen’s intellectual transfiguration is largely connected with the symbolic connotations of the clouds depicted throughout his journey, which alludes to his transcending soul, wafting across the celestial heaven yet hovering intimately close to the earth that he belongs.
At the heart of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lies Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive young man concerned with discovering his purpose in life. Convinced that his lack of kinship or community with others is a shortcoming that he must correct, Stephen, who is modeled after Joyce, endeavors to fully realize himself by attempting to create a forced kinship with others. He tries many methods in hopes of achieving this sense of belonging, including the visiting of prostitutes and nearly joining the clergy. However, it is not until Stephen realizes, as Joyce did, that his true calling is that of the artist that he becomes free of his unrelenting, self-imposed pressure to force connections with others and embraces the fact that he, as an artist, is fully realized only when he is alone.
Just like most Irish folk, Stephen Dedalus is a devout Catholic. Catholicism dominates Stephen's life and completely controls his emotions, thoughts and actions. From an early age Stephen was in the grasp of Catholicism. While attending Clongowes Wood College Stephen prays before he goes to bed “so that he might not go to hell when he [dies].”(15) Even after the praying, just to go to sleep he would have to console himself saying “he would not go to hell when he died; and the shaking would stop.”(15) To be this fearful as a child because of religion would be a substantial reason to move away from it. Stephen was probably eight years old at this time and for a child, this level of fear is unreasonable and possibly hurtful to his mental health.
As Stephen grows, he slowly but inexorably distances himself from religion. His life becomes one concerned with pleasing his friends and family. However, as he matures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin.
In James Joyce's A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man, the main character, Stephen Dedalus, struggles between his natural instincts, or what Bakhtin calls the "internally persuasive discourse" that "[is not] backed up by [an] authority at all", and his learned response, reinforced by the "authoritative discourse" of religion. To Stephen's "internally persuasive discourse", his natural sex drive is not 'wrong'. It is only after he succumbs to the "authoritative discourse" of religion that he learns that such a natural human drive is 'bad'. Thus, he learns that it is wrong to succumb to sex: he does not think that it is bad on his own. In this case, the "authoritative discourse" that considers sexual drive to be 'bad' becomes Stephen's "internally persuasive discourse". He learns that his natural urges are wrong and, as a result, he learns to deny them and pretend them to be nonexistent. This is how the "authoritative discourse" becomes Stephen's "internally persuasive discourse".
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. Moreover, unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” This quote by Ernst Fischer, a German composer, means that truth in art exposes the parts of society, and of life, that no one wants to see. In order for art to change society, it must first reflect the fears and failures of its people. The artist can change how people think of themselves and the world by using less conventional methods of creating art. The artist, in doing this, introduces new ideas of human placement in time and space, new frontiers of thought, that are furthered by the disciplines of science and philosophy. The artist works to introduces unique- and sometimes offensive- ideas so that society will be exposed to new ways of thinking and understanding the world. The artist does this through experimentation with color, style, and form. Therefore, the purpose of the artist should be to challenge how individuals perceive themselves and the offensive aspects of society reflected in art to bring about innovations in the greater society.
The novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiography of James Joyce who delivers the influential aspects in his life and his artistic development to the reader through the eyes of the fictional character of Stephen Dedalus. In the novel, Stephen's journey to maturation and to become an artist is influenced by his religion, sexuality and education. Yet, Stephen is able to overcome the obstacles result from these aspects and experience his life to its fullest.