| Synopsis: |
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's "Dubliners" and the symbolism of "Ulysses", and is essential to the understanding of the later work. The novel charts the intellectual, moral, and sexual development of Stephen Dedalus, from his childhood listening to his father's stories through his schooldays and adolescence to the brink of adulthood and independence, and his awakening as an artist. Growing up in a Catholic family in Dublin in the final years of the nineteenth century, Stephen's consciousness is forged by Irish history and politics, by Catholicism and culture, language and art. |