A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

About the book

Stephen Dedalus's early sensations gradually become a more complex account of school, family, religion, desire, and intellectual ambition. Joyce lets the style develop with the character, making the experience of language part of the story rather than simply its vehicle. Financial troubles and public arguments enter the child's world before he can fully explain them; later, competing obligations demand more deliberate responses. The novel follows an aspiring artist's effort to distinguish inherited forms of thought from convictions he might claim as his own. That effort is neither free of pride nor easily separated from the people it leaves behind. Its interest lies in the making of a perspective, asking what independence costs and how a person learns to turn experience into expression.

• Artistic identity
• Religion and belonging
• Independence

Why read it

For a coming-of-age narrative whose changing language makes intellectual and emotional development directly perceptible.

English text