James Augustine[1] 

Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist,

short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic.
Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the
Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit
schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's
unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.

He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most

influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a
landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles,
most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story
collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published
letters and occasional journalism.

Prose
 Dubliners (short-story collection, 1914)
 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (novel, 1916)
 Ulysses (novel, 1922)
 Finnegans Wake (1939, restored 2012)

Poetry collections
 Chamber Music (poems, Elkin Mathews, 1907)
 Giacomo Joyce (written 1907, published by Faber and Faber, 1968)
 Pomes Penyeach (poems, Shakespeare and Company, 1927)
 Collected Poems (poems, Black Sun Press, 1936, which includes Chamber
Music, Pomes Penyeach and other previously published works)

Play
 Exiles (play, 1918)

Posthumous publications and drafts[edit]

Fiction
  Stephen Hero (precursor to A Portrait; written 1904–06, published 1944)
 The Cat and the Devil (London: Faber and Faber, 1965)
 The Cats of Copenhagen (Ithys Press, 2012)
 Finn's Hotel (Ithys Press, 2013)

Major characters

 Stephen Dedalus – The main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Growing up,
Stephen goes through long phases of hedonism and deep religiosity. He eventually adopts a
philosophy of aestheticism, greatly valuing beauty and art. Stephen is essentially Joyce's alter
ego, and many of the events of Stephen's life mirror events from Joyce's own youth. His
surname is taken from the ancient Greek mythical figure Daedalus, who also engaged in a
struggle for autonomy.

 Simon Dedalus – Stephen's father, an impoverished former medical student with a strong sense
of Irish nationalism. Sentimental about his past, Simon Dedalus frequently reminisces about his
youth.[16] Loosely based on Joyce's own father and their relationship.

 Mary Dedalus – Stephen's mother who is very religious and often argues with Stephen about
attending services.[16]

 Emma Clery – Stephen's beloved, the young girl to whom he is fiercely attracted over the course
of many years. Stephen constructs Emma as an ideal of femininity, even though (or because) he
does not know her well.[16]

 Charles Stewart Parnell – An Irish political leader who is not an actual character in the novel, but
whose death influences many of its characters. Parnell had powerfully led the Irish
Parliamentary Party until he was driven out of public life after his affair with a married woman
was exposed.

 Cranly – Stephen's best friend at university, in whom he confides some of his thoughts and
feelings. In this sense Cranly represents a secular confessor for Stephen. Eventually Cranly
begins to encourage Stephen to conform to the wishes of his family and to try harder to fit in
with his peers, advice that Stephen fiercely resents. Towards the conclusion of the novel he
bears witness to Stephen's exposition of his aesthetic philosophy. It is partly due to Cranly that
Stephen decides to leave, after witnessing Cranly's budding (and reciprocated) romantic interest
in Emma.[16]

 Dante (Mrs. Riordan) – The governess of the Dedalus children. She is very intense and a
dedicated Catholic.[16]

 Lynch – Stephen's friend from university who has a rather dry personality.

The novel begins with Stephen Dedalus' first memories, when he was about three years
old. The fragmented lines are from a childhood story and a nursery song, and are linked
with family associations, sensory perceptions, and pieces of conversation. In this
opening scene, Joyce is presenting to us the genesis of a future artist's perception and
interpretation of the world.

Moving from Stephen's infancy to his early days at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit
boarding school for boys, Joyce focuses on three key incidents which significantly affect
Stephen's personality. First, Stephen is pushed into an open cesspool by a bullying
classmate, and, subsequently, he develops a fever which confines him to the school
infirmary; here, he begins to discern that he is "different," that he is an outsider.

Later, when he is probably six years old, Stephen returns home to celebrate Christmas
dinner with his family and is invited, for the first time, to sit with the adults at the dinner
table. This extraordinarily happy occasion is marred by a heated political argument
between Stephen's old nurse, Dante Riordan, and a dinner guest, Mr. Casey, leaving
Stephen confused about the issues of religion and politics in the adult world.

On returning to school, Stephen accidentally breaks his glasses and is unable to

complete his classwork. He is unjustly humiliated and punished by the cruel prefect of
studies, but after receiving encouragement from a friend, Stephen bravely (if fearfully)
goes to the rector of the school and obtains justice. The success of this meeting instills
in him a healthy self-confidence and ennobles him, for a moment, in the eyes of his
classmates.

After a brief summer vacation at his home in Blackrock, Stephen learns that his father's
financial reversals make it impossible to return to Clongowes Wood; instead, he is
enrolled in a less prestigious Jesuit day school, Belvedere College. Here, he develops a
distinguished reputation as an award-winning essay writer and a fine actor in his school
play. Despite these accomplishments, however, Stephen feels increasingly alienated
from his schoolmates because of his growing religious skepticism and his deep interest
in literature and writing. This feeling of isolation is intensified during a trip with his father
to Cork, where he learns more about his father's weaknesses.

Stephen becomes increasingly repelled by the dead-end realities of Dublin life.

Frustrated by his loss of faith in the Catholic Church, in his family situation, and in his
cultural bonds, Stephen seeks to "appease the fierce longings of his heart." After
wandering through the city's brothel district, he finds momentary solace with a Dublin
prostitute. He is fourteen years old, and this is his first sexual experience.

After a period of "sinful living," Stephen attends an intense three-day spiritual retreat.
During that time, he is overwhelmed by guilt and remorse; he believes that Father Arnall
is speaking directly to him. Panicking, he seeks out a kindly old Capuchin priest,
pledges moral reform, and rededicates himself to a life of purity and devotion. He fills
his days with fervent prayers and takes part in as many religious services as he can.

Noticing Stephen's exceedingly pious behavior, the director of the school arranges a
meeting to encourage Stephen to consider entering the priesthood. At first, Stephen is
flattered, fascinated by the possibilities of the clerical life, but increasingly he is
tormented by carnal desires. He finally realizes that his "inherent sinful nature" makes it
necessary for him to reject a religious vocation.

Having made this discovery about himself, Stephen decides to enroll in the university,
where he hopes to shape his destiny as an artist. This decision is immediately followed
by a climactic "epiphany": he sees a girl wading in the sea; to Stephen, she embodies
the attraction, the promise, and the abandon which he wishes to experience in life. It is
at this moment that Stephen understands that he can only hope to gain this experience
through a life of artistic expression.

Shortly thereafter, Stephen begins a new life as a young man in search of his own
values and his own credo. In comparison with the other college students, Stephen often
seems anti-social and more concerned with pursuing his own interests than supporting
the causes of others. Even Stephen himself realizes that unlike most of his friends, he is
unusually introspective. He is not the typical devil-may-care university student; he
rejects the typical blind patriotic blather, and although he continues to respect the
Catholic faith, he no longer believes that its tenets should govern his life. Through
conversations with friends and a dean of studies, Stephen eventually develops his own
aesthetic theory of art, based on the philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas.
Simultaneously, he concludes that if he is ever going to find his artistic soul, he must
sever all bonds of faith, family, and country. He must leave Dublin and go abroad to
"forge" his soul's "uncreated conscience."
The novel is a bildungsroman and captures the essence of character growth and understanding of
the world around him. The novel mixes third-person narrative with free indirect speech, which allows
both identification with and distance from Stephen. The narrator refrains from judgement.
The omniscient narrator of the earlier Stephen Hero informs the reader as Stephen sets out to write
"some pages of sorry verse," while Portrait gives only Stephen's attempts, leaving the evaluation to
the reader.[29]
The novel is written primarily as a third-person narrative with minimal dialogue until the final chapter.
This chapter includes dialogue-intensive scenes alternately involving Stephen, Davin and Cranly. An
example of such a scene is the one in which Stephen posits his complex Thomist aesthetic theory in
an extended dialogue. Joyce employs first-person narration for Stephen's diary entries in the
concluding pages of the novel, perhaps to suggest that Stephen has finally found his own voice and
no longer needs to absorb the stories of others.[30] Joyce fully employs the free indirect style to
demonstrate Stephen's intellectual development from his childhood, through his education, to his
increasing independence and ultimate exile from Ireland as a young man. The style of the work
progresses through each of its five chapters, as the complexity of language and Stephen's ability to
comprehend the world around him both gradually increase.[31] The book's opening pages
communicate Stephen's first stirrings of consciousness when he is a child. Throughout the work
language is used to describe indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist and the subjective effect
of the events of his life.[32]
The writing style is notable also for Joyce's omission of quotation marks: he indicates dialogue by
beginning a paragraph with a dash, as is commonly used in French, Spanish or Russian
publications.