Flying By The Nets

James Joyce is the most influential novelist in the twentieth century. His works are read and reread countlessly by countless readers. This demonstrates the inexhaustibility of his works. This is the very premise of my thesis.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the starting point of Joyce's literary creation. Since its publication, it has been explored from various theoretical perspectives. But to the best of my knowledge, the joint use of Freudian theories about the human psyche and Lacan's Symbolic order to the appreciation of this novel has not been attempted yet. This attempt, in my humble opinion, is worthwhile and convincing. My thesis is such a try.This thesis is divided into four major parts: introduction, literature review, the psychoanalytical interpretation of Stephen's identity construction, and conclusion. Among them, the third part is the body part. It is subdivided into four chapters: Stephen's id; Stephen's superego and the Symbolic order; Stephen's ego and its mediation; Stephen's identity construction.