The Research Of Modernism In Jovce’s Portrait

As a modernist writer, James Joyce (1882-1941) took a lead in an unprecedented profound literature revolution with his astonishing spirits of experimentalism in the literary world. Joyce was regarded as one of the influential modernists. The number of Joyce’s works was not large, but its impact was of significance for the world literature. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was one of his classical works, which marked the transition of Joyce’s writing style from the realism to the modernism. The thesis will analyze the protagonist Stephen’s psychological development through the research of the modernism in Joyce’s Portrait.The chapter one will at first give an introduction of the author James Joyce and his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There are three parts in this chapter. Part one will give an introduction about James Joyce’s life experience and his literary status as a modernist. Part two is the brief introduction of the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Part three is about a brief instruction of the paper and its general layout.Chapter two is about the literature review. This chapter is constituted by four parts. In the first part is the literature review of the overseas Joyce study, and then the second part gives a presentation about the literature review of Joyce study in China. The third part particularly gives an introduction about the current studies of the novel Portrait. The last part in this chapter will present the modernism theory and the relationship between Joyce and modernism.Chapter three is the main chapter of the whole thesis. This chapter is about the analysis of character-development of the protagonist Stephen in Portrait, which will be developed from four aspects. Firstly the thesis will analyze the modernist use of shift of point-of-view and the shift of language style from the aspect of perspective. Then it turns to the second part, which is Stephen’s psychological development from his painful and ignorant childhood to his rebellious adolescence and then to his mature adulthood. This part is analyzed from the aspect of the modern coming-of-age novel. Thirdly, this part is about the unique modernist structure used in the novel. Joyce applies the Greek mythology of Deadalus in the character-development of Stephen. Then the fourth part analyzes the symbols used in the novel from the aspect of symbolism. The thesis analyzes the images that are of symbolic meaning in the novel in detail and at the same time to highlight the theme of the novel.Then the fourth chapter gives an analysis of the modernist characteristics presented in the novel from two aspects, which are social crisis&spiritual crisis and self-identity.The fifth chapter is the conclusion. This chapter concludes James Joyce’s contribution to the modernism and the world literature and his high modernist status in the world. Besides, this chapter concludes the modernism presented in the novel from three aspects. And finally the thesis lists the limitations of the thesis and gives some suggestions for the future study.In a word, there is no doubt that Joyce is the core figure in the modernism literature. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man marks the transition from realism to modernism of his writing style. We can see many modernist techniques, thoughts and themes in the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.