Personae in A Portrait Through the Use of Language

• Thesis title in Czech: Personae v Portrétu v použitém jazyku
• Thesis title in English: Personae in A Portrait Through the Use of Language
• Key words: peronae, language, Joyce, A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, child, romantic, the Church, artist
• English key words: peronae, language, Joyce, A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, child, romantic, the Church, artist
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2008/2009
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Louis Armand, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 16.11.2010
• Date of assignment: 16.11.2010
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Date and time of defence: 12.09.2011 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 21.08.2011
• Date of proceeded defence: 12.09.2011
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. David Vichnar, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Stephen Dedalus as he appears in Joyce's A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man poses significant difficulties when handling as a coherent literary figure which leads to many opposing and contradictory views. This thesis tries to discuss Stephen from the point of his different stages, called personae, and how these can be seen in the language employed. Four main phases and four main linguistic styles can be traced: Stephen the child, Stephen the romantic, Stephen the Church-goer and Stephen of the last chapter. However, it should be clear that, apart from the first one, which seems more straightforward, the personae of A Portrait are not that clearly separated. The romantic and religious phases shift from one to the other, reflecting Stephen’s emotional turmoil and struggle. The last stage of his development is a mixture of new techniques and both left-over and reworked language attempts, encountered in the earlier phases. The linguistic properties themselves are manifested through repetition, childish expressions, use of modality and questions in the first persona. The romantic one then draws Byronic and other 19^th-century parallels, for instance overuse of adjectives, elevated metaphors and frequent occurrence of standard poetic tropes. The language of the Church is reflected in sermon-like repetition, archaic words, biblical expressions and heavy diction. The last phase tries to use precise technical terms in an imitation of Thomist and other scholastic texts and manages to incorporate many of the previous elements as well, although often in a self-mocking way. It points to a new development of Stephen where he seems to be in more and above all conscious control over the text. At the same time due to the insistence of the language on itself, the environment and surrounding of Stephen withdraws before his first true artistic proclamations. In general, such treatment of A Portrait realised in detail examination of the language and styles Joyce uses creates many possibilities for further discussions and reveals that the fact that it is productive and meaningful to have a certain disagreement between the form and the content.

References

Bibliography

By Joyce:
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1977.
---. Stephen Hero. New York: New Directions Books, 1963.
---. “A Portrait of the Artist.” A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1977.

Joyce-related:
Attridge, Derek. Peculiar Language. London: Routledge, 2004.
---. Joyce Effects – On Language, Theory, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Blamires, Harry. York Notes on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Harlow: Longman York Press, 1988.
Chayes, Irene Hendry. “Joyce's Epiphanies.” A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1977.
Cixous, Hélène. “Joyce: The (r)use of writing.” Post-structuralist Joyce: Essays from the French. Eds. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer. Cambridge: Cambridge Universit Press, 1984.
Deane, Seamus. “James Joyce the Irishman.” The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
---. Eminent Domain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Goldberg, S.L. “Art and Life: The Aesthetic of the Portait.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Kenner, Hugh. Dublin’s Joyce. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
---. Joyce's Voices. Rochester: Dalkey Archive, 2007.
Lemon, Lee T.. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Motif as Motivation and Structure.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Levin, Harry. James Joyce - A Critical Introduction. London: Faber and Faber, 1960.
McKnight, Jeanne. “Unlocking the Word-Hoard: Madness, Identity & Creativity in Joyce.” James Joyce Quarterly 14.4 (1977): 420-35.
O’Connor, Frank. “Joyce and Dissociated Metaphor.” A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1977.
Prescott, Joseph. “James Joyce: A Study in Words.“ PMLA 54.1 (1939): 304-15. JSTOR. Web. 6 Dec. 2009.
Riquelme, John Paul. “Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: transforming the nightmare of history.” The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridg University Press, 2004.
Seward, Barbara. “The Artist and the Rose.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Shutte, William M. “Introduction.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Spoo, Robert. James Joyce and the Language of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Wales, Katie. The Language of James Joyce. Hampshire: The Macmillan Pres ltd., 1992.