A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiographical novel by James Joyce published in one volume in 1916. It was
originally published in a serial form in The Egoist, February 1914 – September 1915. The protagonist of the novel, Stephen Dedalus represents Joyce himself. This novel traces the intellectual, moral and artistic development of the protagonist.
Joyce in this novel implicitly follows the Ibsen’s view of artist- artist separated from other men. Here Stephen rejects the false world of religion for the world of art and detaches himself from his family, abandoning the pursuit of his romantic love and recognizing Irish Nationalism to be absurd game. The first five chapters depict the artist’s struggle and at the end of each chapter he completes one stage. Stephen’s strange name (Dedalus) seemed to him a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve- a symbol of the artist anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth “a new soaring, impalpable imperishable thing”.
The Portrait here is of an embryo artist in the recognition of his
destiny, destiny determined by the constraint. Art does not merely demand renunciation but a serene
detachment. Detachment is the mark of mature artist and Stephen Dedalus is not one yet.
(Stephen Dedalus reappears as one of the principal characters in Ulysses
).
The technique used by Joyce is Stream of Consciousness (modeled upon Dujardin’s Les Lauriers Soni Coupes, 1888).
There is something alone and remote in an artist that can never conform to anyone around or close – this is the Portrait of Artist (even as a Young Man). He feels like God.