Talk:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

While it is true that the book is often noted for stream of consciousness, it shouldn't be. Direct stream of consciousness--"exactly what the protagonist is thinking"--appears relatively infrequently in Portrait of the Artist. Joyce's real innovation in Portrait is his use of style (primarily through syntax, diction, and motifs) to mirror consciousness. But this is an indirect method, not the direct representation of the main character's thoughts seen in stream of consciousness.

Agreed. I'm not sure if I feel like taking on an article about this novel, but another misconception that deserves clarification is that Dedalus is an "alter ego for Joyce." Well, he is, but I wouldn't leave it at that. It might be more accurate to say that he's a "critical representational of Joyce's younger self." The problem with Dedalus is that he's not quite an artist, at least not a good one, and he's certainly not an artist on the level of Joyce -- Dedalus's poetry is mediocre, his aesthetics is naive, and he is hobbled by his uncompromising rejection of his immediate external world. Dedalus would hardly be able to write Ulysses. Personally, I used to dislike the character of Dedalus intensely -- and Joyce by extension, but then I began to read Ulysses, and Portrait began to make more sense to me. If I can pull my thoughts together on this novel into something coherent (and NPOV), I'll update the article, but it's been a while since I read the book. - Cobra libre

He doesn't really 'abandon' the Stephen Hero story; he reuses it in Portrait. Also, it is very much a bemused Joyce looking back on the foolishness of his youth, which is precisely why most people aren't going to like the character of Dedalus. I doubt Joyce himself was overjoyed at his own naivete, but it served as useful material for his later work. Istvan 16:51, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Plot?

I noticed that there is now no mention of a plot on this Wiki page. There should be some - even if it's barely descriptive - so that people know what it's about. Does anyone disagree? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.44.9 (talk) 04:23, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate Titles

"Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science" is a very ambitious title for a single sentence paragraph. Similarly, the "allusions/references in other works" are all limited to variations on the title, so, if there aren't any objections, I will change the title to suit it. AshcroftIleum 15:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Followed by

This feature in the infobox is meant to present the next book in the sries, not the next work written by the author. in this case I reverted it from Exiles (play) to Ulysses (novel), since Dedalus's story is continued in Ulysses. AshcroftIleum 04:41, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Another allusionary reference

Another allusionary title was "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ram" by rock band RamJam. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.91.126.66 (talk) 18:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC).

bad word

"Hence the fungible length of some scenes and chapters, where Joyce's intent was to capture the subjective experience through language, rather than to present the actual experience through prose narrative."

"fungible" is definitely out of place there. fungible means interchangeable. there is nothing interchangeable about the scenes or chapters. Perhaps the writer meant terse? concise? condensed or brisk? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.87.210.102 (talk) 07:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. I came to this page to discuss the very same phrase.

Fungible

It's pretentious (a more widely intelligible word could surely have been chosen), it is normally applied to physical commodities, legal or financia concepts, and it doesn't seem to make any sense, as it means 'interchangeable', and as noted above, it's hard to see how the sections of the novel are interchangeable, and what this has to do with

Joyce's intent... to capture the subjective experience through language, rather than to present the actual experience through prose narrative.

Any suggestions?

Sometimes I think there are people who make it their business to seed WKP articles with inappropriate nonsense in order to downgrade the project as a whole. Centrepull (talk) 09:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Your suspicion is correct. I was just vexed because I had to look the term up!

But nobody has changed it. I might. Lucy.

Just a question

I didn't read this book but it looks kind of the same as Peter Murphy's John the Revelator. Does anyone know if there is any connection between the two books? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.241.8.223 (talk) 10:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Joyce's location while writing the novel

On In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Melvyn Bragg discussed the novel with his guests: Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Jeri Johnson, Senior Fellow in English at Exeter College, Oxford; Katherine Mullin, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leeds. One of them, I think Ms Mullin, stated that Joyce wrote 'Portrait' while actually living elsewhere, keeping authenticity by means of extensive notes he had made whilst in Ireland, and occasional visits to his homeland. I think she said he was living in Trieste at the time, but I didn't hear it clearly. The programme is not available on Listen Again, so can anyone else clarify, and maybe add this useful info to the article?

Edit: The programme will be repeated at 21.30 GMT this evening. I will try to catch it, but someone else's ears would help. Also, sometimes rebroadcasts are edited down, so the comment might be snipped out. Centrepull (talk) 10:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The current week's episode is made available for only a week as a podcast here or via this RSS feed. Don't know if its of the original or the rebroadcast but I do know that in less than a week the opportunity to download it will be gone. 68.165.77.243 (talk) 03:14, 29 November 2009 (UTC).

He wrote Stephen Hero in Dublin, but had moved to Trieste by the time he wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ktlynch (talk) 18:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)