A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners

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A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

and

DUBLINERS

James Joyce

Introduction and Notes

by Kevin J.

H. Dettmar

Widely regarded as the greatest stylist of twentieth-century English litera­ ture, James Joyce deserves the term "revolutionary." His experiments in form and structure, and in language and content, signaled the modemist

move­

ment and continue to influence writers today. His two earliest, and perhaps most accessible, successes are here brought together in one volumt'. In the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Ycntng Man, young Stephen Dedalus yearns to be an artist but first must struggle against tltl' forces of church, school, and society, which fetter his imagination and stifle his soul. The book's inventive style is apparent from its opening pages, amI is one of the first examples of the "stream of consciousness" technique. Comprising fifteen stOlies. DlIbliners presents a community of mt'smt'riz­ ing. humorous, and haunting characters-a group portrait. The interactiolls among them fonn one long meditation on the human conditioll. clIlllIillat· ing with "The Dead," one of Joyce's most graceful compositions. Kevin

J. H. Dettmar is Professor of English and Cultural Studil's at

Southem Illinois University Carbondale. He is tht' author or (,