On The Implication Of Stephen’s Epiphany In A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

With his distinguished style of writing and insightful probe into human’sconsciousness, James Joyce is a rebellious writer against his time who never stoppedexperimentation and innovation so as to get rid of the obstacles of literary convention andto forge a new way of presenting the subtle movement and development of people’sconsciousness. In1916, the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man attractedgreat attention. Ever since then，studies on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man hasnever stopped. A Portrait of the Artist a Young Man remains one of the most brilliantbildungsroman in English literature partly due to its innovative prose style, bold depictionof sex, sharp criticism of his nation and religion, and most importantly, the application ofepiphanies in literature.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man recounts the story of Young Stephen Dedalus,a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides tocast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to writing.During the process of growing up, the epiphany at the end of chapter four is of vitalimportance. Stephan Dedalus struggled to get rid of all the obstacles, whatever it might be.In some way, it is reasonable to argue that the epiphany in chapter four of A Portrait of theArtist as a Young Man is the soul’s cry awakening in Stephan Dedalus’s mind.This thesis is to explore and study the implication of Stephan’s epiphany in A Portraitof the Artist as a Young Man. The moment Stephan’s epiphany in chapter four took place israther short, but there is a long prelude beforehand which is also a vital part for theelaboration. This paper tries to make a systematic study of the implication of Stephan’sepiphany by making a systematic analysis of both the internal and external causes leadingto Stephen’s epiphany and to elaborate the essence of the protagonist’s epiphany. What isnew about this paper is the point from which the research is centering around. Based on thecollected materials, this paper targets at explaining the implication of epiphanies aboutwhich researches are relatively in short compared with researches on the expression ofStephen’s epiphany.