100.0 - Commencement in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

One quiet evening, sunk into the corner of a soft couch with the fire throwing little gold flickers across the room, I was doing the usual—aimlessly scrolling through social media—when a small announcement stopped me in my tracks: The James Joyce Centre was offering a course on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Intriguing. Impulsive click. It felt like an invitation. I clicked. I signed up. And just like that, six weeks of Joyce, Dublin, and Dedalus awaited me.

What follows on this blog is a record of that journey—notes from class, thoughts sparked along the way, small discoveries, big questions, and all the unexpected places a modern reader finds himself wandering when he follows Stephen Dedalus through his becoming. Enjoy the ramble.

What Kind of Book Is This?

The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a coming-of-age-tale. This style of work is commonly referred to by the German term, Bildrundsroman. The reason that Germany is credited with originating this form of writing. A novel of formation. A Bildungsroman is a “novel of formation,” a narrative that explains how a young person develops into who they become.

Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's protagonis, grows before us in language itself. The novel begins in the toddler rhythms of early childgood and ends with the sharpened edges of a young man breaking away from famly, faith, and nation. Joyce isn't just telling us Stephen's story; he's letting us inhabit Stephen's develiping consciousness.

Portrait or Autobiography? A Bit of Both.

The story used an autobiographical outline. It is not a full autobiography, but a partially autobiographical novel. James Joyce is representing through the character of Stephen Daedalus. It is heavily based on Joyce’ childhood schooling, family, and early artistic rebellion. The story does not recount Joyce’s actual life in a literal or factual way. It fictionalizing, compresses, and reshapes events.

The parallels are impossible to miss:

Stephen’s family resembles Joyce’s:

• A financially declining, once-respectable family

• A father who is humorous, irresponsible, and nostalgic

• A mother who is religious and longs for a stable son

Stephen’s schooling mirror Joyce’s:

• Clongowes -> Clongowes

• Belvedere -> Belvedere

• University College -> University College Dublin

Stephen’s artistic theories and Joyce’s

• His obsession with language, aesthetics, and literature

• His belief in artistic independence

• His decision to leave Ireland to develop as an artist

Stephens rebellion is Joyce’s.

• Rejects Catholic orthodoxy

• Rejects narrow nationalism

• Pursues a solitary artistic path

Stephen’s personality mimics Joyce’s:

• Introverted, intellectual, observant

• Sensitive to language and sound

• Proud, stubborn, independent-minded

• Prone to intense self-analysis

• Feels alienated within his own culture.

The Troubled Birth of A Portrait

James Joyce faced significant obstacles in getting A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published, largely due to censorship and the difficulty of coordinating publication from abroad. His location during the writing process — first in Trieste, later in Zurich — made communication with publishers slow and unreliable.

In 1904, Joyce wrote an experimental essay titled “A Portrait of the Artist.” It was strange, digressive, and highly philosophical. Joyce submitted it to magazines, but it was rejected for being too dense, too literary, and too unconventional.

Between 1904 and 1905, Joyce revived the idea as a long autobiographical novel called Stephen Hero. He wrote hundreds of pages, but eventually abandoned the project. Most of the manuscript is now lost.

Joyce then restarted the novel from scratch while living in Trieste beginning in 1907. Chapters 1–3 were completed by 1909, and Chapters 4–5 by 1911. Frustrated by his slow progress, Joyce famously threw the manuscript of A Portrait into the fireplace. His wife, Nora Barnacle, and his sister pulled the pages from the fire. Without their intervention, the novel would not exist.

The Egoist Arrives on The Scene

In 1913, the poet Ezra Pound, a major champion of modern literature, contacted Joyce and asked whether he had work to publish. Pound and editor Harriet Shaw Weaver arranged for A Portrait to appear in 25 installments in the London literary magazine The Egoist. Even this was difficult: The Egoist was financially unstable, and World War I disrupted international mail. Joyce was living in Austria-Hungary, while the editors were in London, so corrected pages sometimes arrived weeks late. Despite these challenges, the serialization introduced Joyce to avant-garde literary circles.

Securing a full book publication proved even harder. British publishers refused the novel, fearing censorship. It was labeled obscene, immoral, blasphemous, and anti-English.

Finally, in 1916, American publisher B. W. Huebsch agreed to publish the novel uncensored. Because Joyce had fled to Zurich during the war, he no longer had the manuscript with him. Typesetters in New York assembled the book from Egoist installments and telegrammed corrections. Many errors slipped into the first edition, published in December 1916. Copies were later shipped to London for the Egoist Press edition of 1917. This publication launched Joyce’s international literary career.

In 1924, Jonathan Cape released a carefully proofread edition — the last version Joyce personally corrected. It is now regarded as the most authoritative early edition of the novel.

Works Cited:

Newman, Josh Q. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. James Joyce Centre, 5 Nov.–10 Dec. 2025. Online and in-person course

Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Revised ed., Oxford University Press, 1982.

Groden, Michael, et al., editors. The James Joyce Archive. 63 vols., Garland Publishing, 1977–1979.

Herr, Cheryl Temple. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Introduction.”

The Norton Critical Edition: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

edited by John Paul Riquelme, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton, 2007, pp. xi–xxxii.

Jackson, J. R., and Robert Scholes. The Workshop of Daedalus: James Joyce and the Raw Materials for “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

Northwestern University Press, 1965.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Vintage Books, 1993.

Joyce, James. Stephen Hero.

Edited by Theodore Spencer, Jonathan Cape, 1944.

Joyce, Stanislaus. My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early Years.

Edited by Richard Ellmann, Faber and Faber, 1958.

Kershner, R. B. “Huebsch, B. W.”

James Joyce A–Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work,

Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 109–110.

Maddox, Brenda. Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce.

Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Pound, Ezra. The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941.

Edited by D. D. Paige, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1950.

Riquelme, John Paul. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism.

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.

Scholes, Robert, and A. Walton Litz. Dublin’s Joyce.

Yale University Press, 1964.