Search And Rebellion

James Joyce (1882-1941), one of the most foremost literary figures of the twentieth century, is committed to the exploration of growth as a dominant theme in his oeuvre. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Joyce's first published novel as well as the first stream of consciousness Bildungsroman, can be read as both the quintessential Bildungsroman (the story of the young man's growing up) and Kunstlerroman (the early life of an artist), which is centered on Stephen's growth and his quest for self and identity. In the novel, Joyce rejects the middle-class values, emphasizes the fluidity and continuity of growth, suggests Stephen's necessity of escaping from the world and the inevitability of self-exile and finds out the reality of spiritual alienation and separation.Since the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, abundant criticism has been dealt to the implication and significance of growth in the novel from various angles. But up till now, no systematic investigation has been made into the theme of growth in terms of Bildungsroman tradition and Joyce's unique concept of growth. Positioning Stephen's progressive denial of the middle-class values and the inevitability of his escaping from the world in pursuit of his artistic evocation as underlying parallel threads, this thesis attempts to reveal Stephen's artistic theory, his ordained vocation, and the confrontations strengthening from his submission to sexual passion in his adolescent age, to his search for the religious solace, and finally to his choice between priesthood and his ordained vocation, so that some light will be shed on the growth theme in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Severing himself from Family, Religion and Country promises his pursuit of freedom and delivers new forms of connection with his familiarcircumstances. Stephen strives for flying away from the sordid Dublin as if he were a mythic artificer, with "two wings"—his aesthetic theory as one and his literary expression as the other. He also desires for giving voice to his apprehension of his self and the Ireland society more completely and more objectively by means of artistic expression.With Stephen's growth, the novel shows that the process of the potential artist's growing up from youth to maturity, from initial confusion towards self and the world to his clear understanding of both his own self and the sordid Ireland is a process of alienation and separation as well as a process of quest for beauty and truth. This paradox reflects the vexation and perplexity of growing up as well as the regeneration of the artist's mission in the modern world.