Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Reading Joyce
- 2 Joyce the Irishman
- 3 Joyce the Parisian
- 4 Joyce the modernist
- 5 Dubliners
- 6 Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 7 Ulysses
- 8 Finnegans Wake
- 9 Joyce’s shorter works
- 10 Joyce and feminism
- 11 Joyce and sexuality
- 12 Joyce and consumer culture
- 13 Joyce, colonialism, and nationalism
- Further reading
- Index
- Series List
2 - Joyce the Irishman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Reading Joyce
- 2 Joyce the Irishman
- 3 Joyce the Parisian
- 4 Joyce the modernist
- 5 Dubliners
- 6 Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 7 Ulysses
- 8 Finnegans Wake
- 9 Joyce’s shorter works
- 10 Joyce and feminism
- 11 Joyce and sexuality
- 12 Joyce and consumer culture
- 13 Joyce, colonialism, and nationalism
- Further reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
In Stephen Hero, the abandoned forerunner to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the undergraduate artist-hero attacks the Irish educational system and gives promise of his rebellion against it and the culture it represents:
The deadly chill of the atmosphere of the college paralysed Stephen's heart. In a stupor of powerlessness he reviewed the plague of Catholicism . . . The spectacle of the world in thrall filled him with the fire of courage. He, at least, though living at the farthest remove from the centre of European culture, marooned on an island in the ocean, though inheriting a will broken by doubt and a soul the steadfastness of whose hate became as weak as water in siren arms, would lead his own life according to what he recognised as the voice of a new humanity, active, unafraid and unashamed.
(SH 198–9/194)Joyce’s repudiation of Catholic Ireland and his countering declaration of artistic independence are well-known and integral features of his life-long dedication to writing. Yet he was formed by the Ireland he repudiated and his quest for artistic freedom was itself shaped by the exemplary instances of earlier Irish writers who had, in his view, failed to achieve that independence which he sought for himself, an independence which was at once the precondition and the goal of writing.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce , pp. 28 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004