A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Abstract

There is little or nothing in Joyce’s letters that justifies or explains A Portrait of the Artist . At the time of its first appearance as a serial in The Egoist Joyce was still busily engaged in the justification of Dubliners and perhaps the best record of the critical views that informed its composition is to be found in the body of writings and lectures made by Joyce during his residence in Trieste. These writings (sadly now out of print in England) include the lecture ‘Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages’, which gives the clearest account of Joyce’s views of contemporary Ireland as a country defeated in spirit by centuries of English domination and by Roman Catholicism. Readers may better understand Stephen’s discussions with Davin in A Portrait in the light of its vision of Ireland during the Pamell Home Rule era as a country capable only of moral narrowness and betrayal, and Joyce’s view that ‘no one who has any self–respect stays in Ireland’ seems identical to Stephen’s.

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