A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce · 1882–1941 · Ireland

Why it matters

Stephen Dedalus grows from baby-talk to aesthetic manifesto, the prose maturing with him: style as biography. The novel of vocation: 'to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.'

At a glance

Style shifts with the protagonist's age, from simple to dense aesthetic argument.