Stephen Dedalus

Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, as well as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an important character in Joyce's monumental Ulysses. A number of critics, such as Harold Bloom, have named a younger Stephen as the narrator of the first three stories in Dubliners.

In Stephen Hero, an early version of what became Portrait, we find the surname written as "Daedalus," a more precise allusion to Daedalus, the Greek mythological architect, contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would then imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. (as Buck Mulligan puts it in Ulysses, "Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!") Upon significantly revising the mammoth Stephen Hero text into the much more compact A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce opted to shorten the name to "Dedalus".

Stephen Dedalus also appears in Ulysses as a parallel to Telemachus and, less overtly, Hamlet. He is the protagonist of the three preliminary chapters of that work, before Leopold Bloom is introduced, and his interactions with that character and his wife, Molly, form much of the final chapters' substance. As his mythological namesake, Daedalus (or Daidalus in the Greek pronounciation and transliteration) who according to Ovid's Metamorphoses (VIII:183-235) was shut up in a tower to prevent his knowledge of the labyrinth from spreading to the public, Stephen opens the modern Odyssey on July 16th, 1904 in Dubin and while taking breakfast in the Sandycove Martello tower where he has been staying, Stephen spreads his opinions of religion especially as resulting from the recent death of his mother with his quasi-friend Buck Mulligan, who manages to offend Stephen before making plans to go drinking later that evening as they part ways. After teaching a history lesson on ancient Rome, the "Proteus" (the Greek Mythological prophetic old man of the sea and the shepherd of sea animals such as seals who knew all things past, present, and future but disliked telling what he knew)chapter finds Stephen ambling about the strand as both his pertinent and stray thoughts are related in the form of an interior monologue. After the intermission of many chapters concerning Bloom, Stephen returns to the fore of the novel in the library episode, in which he expounds at length to some acquaintances his theory of the obscurely autobiographical nature of Shakespeare's works and questions the institution of fatherhood, deeming it to be a fiction. He discredits his own ideas afterward, although this is perhaps illustrating his lack of self-confidence.

As a character, Stephen seems to parallel many facets of Joyce's life and personality. Stephen's first name comes from the first Christian martyr and, in juxtaposition, his surname refers to the mythological figure Daedalus, a brilliant artificer who constructed a pair of wings for himself and his son Icarus as a means of escaping the island of Crete, where they were imprisoned by King Minos (who contracted Daedalus to build a Labyrinth to contain the Minotaur). Some critics suggest that Stephen's surname also reflects the labyrinthine quality of Stephen's developmental journey in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The choice to use the name Dedalus also represents Stephen's wish to "fly" away from the constraints of religion, nationality, and politics which he feels hold him back artistically.

Quotations

You speak to me of language, nationality, religion...I shall try to fly by those nets.

—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, chapter 5

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

—Ulysses, episode 9

Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

—Ulysses, episode 2

I fear those big words that make us so unhappy.

—Ulysses, episode 2