A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

In his first and still most widely read novel, James Joyce makes a strange peace with the traditional narrative of a young man's self-discovery by respecting its substance while exploding its form, thereby inaugurating a literary revolution. Published in 1916 when Joyce was al-ready at work on "Ulysses," "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is exactly what its title says and much more. In an exuberantly in-ventive masterpiece of subjectivity, Joyce portrays his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling through religious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awak-ening. In part a vivid picture of Joyce's own youthful evolution into one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, it is also a moment in the intellectual history of an age.

James Joyce (1882-1941) was born in Dublin, the oldest of ten children in a family that struggled with poverty. His works include Finnegans Wake, Dubliners, and the modern epic Ulysses.

Seamus Deane, novelist and professor of modern English and American literature at University College, Dublin, has been a Fulbright Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a visiting professor at several American universities.