James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man: A Casebook

by Mark A. Wollaeger

Overview

This casebook offers a comprehensive introduction to this landmark in modern fiction. The essays collected here will help first-time readers, teachers, and advanced scholars gain new insight into Joyce's semi-autobiographical story of an Irish boy's slow and difficult discovery of his artistic vocation. Mark Wollaeger's introduction provides an overview of the composition and early reception of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as a survey of some of the recurrent issues debated by literary critics. Essays by Hugh Kenner and Patrick Parrinder offer both indispensable overviews of the entire novel-its themes, structure, and idiom-and close attention to specific interpretive cruxes. Other essays include classic responses by Wayne Booth, Fritz Senn, Michael Levenson, Hélène Cixous, and a newly revised and expanded version of Maud Ellmann's groundbreaking "Polytropic Man." Together the essays bring into focus the wide range of questions that have kept A Portrait fresh for the new millennium.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195150766
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2003
Series:	Casebooks in Criticism
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	5.62(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Mark A. Wollaeger is Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Portrait in Perspective, Hugh Kenner2. The Problem of Distance in A Portrait of the Artist, Wayne Booth3. The Style of the Troubled Conscience, Hlne Cixous4. A Portrait of the Artist, Patrick Parrinder5. The Challenge: "ignotas animum" (An old-fashioned Close Guessing at a Borrowed Structure), Fritz Senn6. The Name and the Scar: Identity in The Odyssey and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Maud Ellmann7. Stephen's Diary in Joyce's portrait-The Shape of Life, Michael Levenson8. Framing, Being Framed, and the Janus Faces of Authority, Vicki Mahaffey9. Thrilled by His Touch: The Aestheticizing of Homosexual Panic in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joseph Valente10. Portrait of an Aesthete, Emer Nolan11. The Woman of the Ballyhoura Hills: James Joyce and the Politics of Creativity, Marian Eide12. 'Goodbye Ireland I'm Going to Gort': Geography, Scale, and Narrating the Nation, Marjorie Howes13. Between Stephen and James: Portraits of Joyce as a Young Man, Mark A. WollaegerSuggested Reading

Editorial Reviews

"A fine collection of essays. The essays are of uniformly high quality and certainly would effectively introduce a student to some current critical modes as well as give an idea of the issues that have dominated Joyce criticism over the past fifty years or so."—R. Brandon Kershner, University of Florida

"Readers will appreciate this impressive collection of essays which brings together bold old and new criticism.... In total, these essays offer a fascinating introduction to the wide variety of criticism on Joyce's book, providing useful resources for students new to A Portrait as well as those who have studied it for years."—English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

From the Publisher