Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1976

Keywords

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric

First Advisor

Zack Bowen

Second Advisor

William B. Stein

Third Advisor

Robert Kroetsch

Abstract

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a modern classic. Its modernity places it in close temporal proximity to the present reader, while its classic nature ostensibly attests to its timelessness and perennial quality. Yet, it is precisely these two properties that have rendered Portrait a remote, even though a widely read and studied, text. The voluminous criticism and analysis produced in the sixty years since the appearance of this, Joyce’s first, novel has done more to obscure and dull its impact on the reader than to reveal its authentic and disturbing nature. A similar, though worse, kind of fate has been suffered by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. A reader seldom approaches Joyce’s work without a sense of paralyzing awe, or without a guilty feeling that he is intruding upon hallowed ground reserved for the select few. The daunting mass of scholarship dealing with allusions, inferences, influences, complex and subtle unifying patterns, structure and architecture, leitmotifs, autobiographical echoes, and a plethora of other matters makes the actual text virtually inaccessible. An individual who ventures a reading of A Portrait is, consequently, required to be either a fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread, or else a treasure-house and repository of recondite knowledge rivaling the most comprehensive encyclopedia. A Portrait has, unfortunately, gained some of its stature and extended its appeal as a result of its almost overwhelming allusive richness. Its readers confront it in the shadow of thick clouds of scholarship, which prevents them from encountering it openly and fruitfully. Otherwise, they derive the same pleasure out of it as they do in completing the Sunday paper crossword puzzle, or in participating in a treasure hunt.

The necessity of breaking through these artificial barriers in order to approach the text anew is obvious. It would, however, be unforgivably naive simply to ignore what has already been written and stated. For, no reading of a literary text ever occurs in a vacuum; rather, it takes place in a historical context. This context outlines the reader’s frame of reference, it delineates his horizon, and it marks the boundaries of the questions he asks and the answers he expects. The reader, then, inevitably approaches a text with certain a priori notions of what he is likely to find in it and of how he should go about finding it. His response to the literary work is intimately related to the extent of the work’s confirmation or disappointment of his expectations, and to the degree of difficulty or ease with which his approach discloses the work’s conformity to or departure from his presuppositions. A major source of these expectations and presuppositions is literary scholarship: critical theory, literary history, biography, theories of aesthetics and aesthetic evaluation. It is this vast corpus of scholarship and tradition that frames the questions a reader addresses or formulates à propos of a text. Blindness to these shaping elements is thus tantamount to a blindness to one’s limitations. These limitations have to be surpassed before the text can be newly interpreted, but they will not be surpassed so long as they are tacitly ignored, casually denied, or unquestioningly accepted.

....

Ideally the task of liberating the reader of A Portrait from the boundaries within which traditional literary interpretation, and more specifically New Criticism, have confined him, should involve a detailed study of the history of Western metaphysics and aesthetics (the latter has rarely not been a branch of the former), a careful examination of the novelistic tradition (with due emphasis on the development of the bildungsroman), and a close consideration of the massive criticism which now surrounds and obscures the text. Such a mammoth task would be a breakthrough for the readers of Joyce, for all those interested in the novel as a genre, and, most importantly, for any one engaged in the study of Modernism—it would, indeed, be a necessary and desirable move in the direction of rewriting literary history. One small step in this direction might conceivably be taken by devoting attention to one of the central issues raised in A Portrait, namely the relationship between aesthetics and religion. Seen in the contexts of the Western onto-theological tradition, and of the climate of thought prevalent at the time of the novel’s appearance, this issue may be a pointer that leads to a better understanding of Modernist aesthetics, and to a recovery of the challenging newness of Joyce's text. The ramifications of such an approach are far flung, and it is important that they be made explicit, in order to shed some light on Modernism and its various manifestations. It is equally important to show that the frequent connection of aesthetics and religion or spirituality in Modernist writing betrays a transcendental urge which owes its origins to the metaphysical tradition that has formed the core of Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Stephen Dedalus represents the culmination of this tradition, while Joyce’s critique of Stephen constitutes a serious challenge to it. In his first novel Joyce lays bare the grounds upon which Modernist aesthetics are founded.

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