![]() Stephen Dedalus subscribes to an aesthetic ideal that includes being cut off from about everything that could possibly limit an artist, including social and local boundaries the paradox being, of course, that the artist nonetheless needs these contexts as ‘material’ for his art. Therefore, in my paper I would like to explore how social class dynamics are represented and depicted by James Joyce in Portrait more specifically I want to see if Joyce’s idea of the artist as a global classless being is actually possible within the boundaries of a class-based society. Although a number of studies (Brenann, Ledden, Canny) examine the local contexts of Portrait, the extant research has overlooked the complex social class dynamics of the novel, an interesting yet understudied phenomenon in literature studies. As the title already gives away – perhaps in a subtle hint to Oscar Wilde-, this Kunstlerroman recounts how Stephen casts off all his familial, social and religious constraints in order to become an artist, a writer. Set in the Dublin area in the late nineteenth century, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus’ growing up. ![]()
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