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The Portrait of Stephen in a World of Words

Author: HuangJuYing
Tutor: GaoFen
School: Zhejiang University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Discipline/disciplinary power discourse language acquisition Subjectivity understanding
CLC: I562.074
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2006
Downloads: 84
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Abstract

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, like any other great works of James Joyce (1882—1941), is an abundance of meaning that can never be easily read and fully explained. Although all those countless interpretations and critical essays in existence do lead to better understandings of this novel, none of them have actually exhausted its meaning. In another sense, the existence of such interpretations can also assure readers of the enormous possibilities and great potentials to understand Portrait.With its emphasis on the much-debated thematic significance of the maturing process of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, this paper aims to show new light on this accustomed theme. It reads Portrait in the light of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault and tries to portray Stephen’s growing up process through his inhabitance in language. And in so doing, it also confers a universal significance on Portrait, for language is the house of being, it enlightens and meanwhile confines every human being dwells in it. In this sense, Stephen is never alone in his experience of being an individual matures while struggles in language.This paper can be divided into six chapters.The first chapter is a general introduction;it provides some background information of James Joyce and it also illustrates the research situations of Portrait in Western Countries as well as in Mainland China. Chapter two briefly introduces my research purpose and its theoretical foundation. Wittgenstein and Foucault serve in this thesis as a lamp to elucidate Portrait: through the light of Wittgenstein’s pondering over language as well as with the help of Foucault’s ruminations on power, the portrait of Stephen can be clearly depicted and the surroundings he is in easily understood. Chapter three depicts Stephen’s groping in the world as well as in the world of words in the light of Wittgenstein. Stephen, like every other human being, is born into a realistic world as well as into a world of words. He learns his mother tongue as a form of life. Accompanying his language acquisition is his understanding of his surroundings. Actually, the understanding process is his very experience of growing up. However, maturing is forever a process, while understanding, being themanifestation of maturing, is also a process. Stephen went through his childhood and adolescence in Portrait, and his understanding comes in a slow pace and in a roundabout way. Largely based on the ideas of Foucault’s power and subjectivity, chapter four is centered on the emergence of Stephen’s subjectivity in discourse.Maturing is not only represented through one’s understanding of the outside world,tbut also located in his exploration of himself, of his subjectivity and value. However, according to Foucault, it is discourse that produces subject, and individuals can only realize their own subjectivity by their subjections to the knowledge and power of others’discourse. What’s more, since discursive practices in which individuals participate are forever changing, individuals who are constituted and reconstituted through the various social interactions are in no sense a fixed end product. This changing recognition of oneself represents one’s maturing process. As to Stephen, as time goes by, his self-portrait of himself has also changed from "a baby tuckoo" to "a terrible sinner", and later to "a being apart in every order". Chapter five tries to explain Stephen’s exile with the help of Foucault’s idea of discipline power. It points out that Stephen’s conviction of himself as "a being apart in every order" leads to his exile, to his run-away from the discipline power which is itself much entangled with human society, with its culture and discourse. In this sense, Stephen’s exile can only be a failure, as what is proved in Ulysses. Chapter six winds up the whole paper and brings it to a satisfactory conclusion.

The Portrait of Stephen in a World of Words

Abstract

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