A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Book excerpt: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1916] established James Joyce as a leading figure in literary modernism across Europe. The novel is set in the author’s homeland, Ireland, and narrates, in five episodes, the childhood of Stephen Dedalus. The plot is entirely based on Joyce’s own life and serves as a private manifesto, particularly through its sharp declaration of independence from Catholicism. Joyce pioneered a new way of writing novels, abandoning traditional narration for stream of consciousness and introducing his epiphanies—momentary revelations that, in their everydayness, hint at a larger context of life. Upon the recommendation of the American poet Ezra Pound, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was serialized in the magazine The Egoist in 1914/15 before being published as a book the following year. Today, more than a hundred years after its release, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is considered one of the most significant autobiographical texts in world literature. The Modern Library ranked it as the 3rd best English-language novel of the 20th century (with Joyce’s Ulysses as #1). JAMES JOYCE [1882-1941], Irish author, is a key figure in modernist literature with works such as Dubliners [1914], A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1916], and Ulysses [1922].