"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce (Zoom)
Spring (9 - 13 hours) | Available (Membership Required)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the second book and first novel of Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941), published in 1916. Joyce portrays his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling through religious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awakening. In this novel, Joyce remakes the traditional narrative of a young man’s self-discovery by respecting its substance while exploding its form, thereby inaugurating a literary revolution. Exuberantly experimental in its style, which includes the invention of the stream-of-consciousness technique, this modernist bildungsroman (a novel that deals with the formative years of the main character) entangles the journey of its young hero in a rich brocade of Irish history, politics, culture, and religion which he must master through language to “forge…the uncreated conscience of [his] race.”
Reading comprises 100 pages per week.
My classes combine brief lectures and PowerPoint presentations with discussion.
This is a 6-session course (12 hours total).
Required Book:
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce (ISBN-13: 978-0142437346)
Phyllis Deutsch
Phyllis Deutsch holds a PhD in modern European history from New York University. For several years, she taught history at NYU, Columbia University, The New School for Social Research, and the University of Pennsylvania. For 15 years, she served as editor-in-chief at University Press of New England, where she published numerous titles in the fields of 19th century history, literature, and culture. She is currently a Lecturer in the Writing Program at Dartmouth College.