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A Deconstructive Reading on James Joyce's a Portrait of the Artist As A ISSN 1923-1555[Print] Studies in Literature and Language ISSN 1923-1563[Online] Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011, pp. 127-132 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/j.sll.1923156320110303.200 www.cscanada.org Stephan’s Brave New World: A Deconstructive Reading on James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Ruzbeh Babaee1,*; Iraj Montashery1,2 1Faculty of Communication and Modern Languages, University Putra and distance as a writer. As an account of the development Malaysia of a young man’s mind, A Portrait is a bildungsroman, 2Email: [email protected] *Corresponding author. a form that conventionally concludes at a momentous Email: [email protected] point in the hero’s life, which signals the culmination of a process of self-discovery. Received 20 September 2011; accepted 1 December 2011 Eugene Jolas proclaimed “The new artist of the word has recognized the autonomy of language” (Jolas, The Abstract Revolution of Language and James Joyce, p.79). Jolas A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914) is claimed that “when the beginnings of this new age are considered to be one of the major examples of the genre seen in perspective, it will be found that the disintegration bildungsroman (the novel of the artist). This study of words, and their subsequent reconstruction on other concerns the search of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, planes, constitute some of the most important acts of for identity and meaning, which encompass a time period our epoch” (Ibid, p.79). For disintegrating and then from his infancy to his late adolescence. In quest of reconstructing the language, the new artist of the word identity and meaning, Stephen breaks from two totalities- destabilizes meaning, calls into question the referentiality nationalism and Catholic Church- that rule over his life. of language, exposes its arbitrariness, its materiality and The present study reads the novel within a deconstructive its status as rhetoric. perspective. Stephen like Nietzsche tends to talk about James Joyce’s revolution of the word is part of the “the death of god” to pave the way for his exploration of totality of our time, showing the revolutionary decentering meaning and identity. He tends to rebel and go beyond of epistemology by nineteenth and early twentieth-century what Lyotard calls “the grand narrative”. thinkers such as Jacques Derrida who believes: Key words: Deconstruction; Metanarrative; … the Nietzschean critique of metaphysics, the critique of the concepts of being and truth, for which were substituted the Nationalism; Catholic Church; Simulation concepts of play, interpretation, and sign (sign without truth present); the Freudian critique of self-presence, that is, the Ruzbeh Babaee, Iraj Montashery (2011). Stephan’s Brave New critique of consciousness, of the subject, of self-identity and World: A Deconstructive Reading on James Joyce’s A Portrait of of self- proximity or self-possession; and, more radically, the the Artist as a Young Man. Studies in Literature and Language, Heideggerean destruction of metaphysics, of onto- theology, of 3 (3), 127-132. Available from: URL: http://www.cscanada. the determination of being as presence. (Structure, Sign, and n e t / i n d e x . p h p / s l l / a r t i c l e / v i e w / j . s l l . 1 9 2 3 1 5 6 3 2 0 1 1 0 3 0 3 . 2 0 0 Play, p.250) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/j.sll.1923156320110303.200 In A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce like Nietzsche calls for “the death of god” and talks about the death of the father and god and the birth of Stephen as INTRODUCTION the reader. In Joyce’s novel Stephen Dedalus at first is like a deconstructive reader who rebels against the authority Completed in 1914, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist of his father, religion and church to discover the meaning, as a Young Man depicts a perspective of the development but he is too naïve to understand finding an absolute of Stephen Dedalus from childhood until the time when meaning is impossible. Barthes as one of the significant he decides to leave Ireland as a way to keep independence proponent in the chain of deconstructive criticism sees 126 127 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Stephan’s Brave New World: A Deconstructive Reading on James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the absurdity of seeking to discover an absolute meaning in the text because such a meaning is ever-elusive. In A “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is portrait Stephen starts his journey as a reader but ends it profaned” (Marx and Engels, 1854, cited in Childs, as an impersonal and isolated writer. He decides to be a Modernism, pp. 31-32). These words are evocative of writer to make himself impersonal and dispassionate and the loss of faith and certainty, the sense of fragmentation emancipate other readers in the cost of his isolation from and alienation, and the atmosphere of dissolution which the society. pervaded much of western European society from the T.S. Eliot in the early decades of the twentieth- middle of the nineteenth century. James Joyce’s A Portrait century, and, more particularly, in his celebrated essay is a reflection of the mentioned excerpt. Joyce depicts “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1921) pleads for an alienation and fragmentation from the totality of the extinction of the empirical author. This turning away Enlightenment, religion, and nationalism. from the authority of the author is what can be seen as the Like the Dedalus of Greek myth, Stephen must grow beginning of what later on culminated in Roland Barthes’s wings so that he may fly above the tribulations of his life. “The Death of the Author” (1971) as a complete denial of As he matures, Dedalus begins to understand his position the role for the author. Joyce through Stephen depicts the in life, and decides to rise above the turbulent Ireland of death of the Author and that life has different meanings the early 1900s in a rebellion against society, a struggle and no one can talk about it with certainty. against his beliefs and a struggle against his heritage and For years the author occupied the high position of past. He wants to rebel against all those Enlightenment god, the ruling deity, the great Omni-present- omniscient project of progress and perfectibility in favor of power. But early in the twentieth century this great uncertainties and provisional condition. Stephen feels the authorial authority began to weaken in the new literary need to rebel; to break into a new setting- one in which he approach. Stephen comes to self-discovery in the cost could be free to express all his thoughts. of his father’s weakness; as Roland Barthes believes the author must die, because the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author. This notion can be 1. STEPHEN DECONSTRUCTS THE illustrated in Stephen’s confrontation with his friends who METANARRATIVES are an additional facet of society that he rebels against. In a Catholic society, Stephen Dedalus is exposed to the Throughout the book, Stephen consistently refuses to term ‘morality’ at a very young age. Because of Ireland’s succumb to peer pressure. The boldness of his refusals critical political atmosphere, in which the church plays grows as his knowledge and social awareness grow. an important role, young Stephen becomes aware of the While at Clongowes, Stephen gets into a dispute with conflict between the secular front and the Irish Church. his classmates over who the greatest writer is. Dedalus is From the beginning of his career, Stephen faces with confronted: two totalities; nationalism and religion. The Roman Admit that Byron was no good. Catholic Church continued to be a potent force in Joyce’s No. native Ireland throughout and beyond the nineteenth Admit. century, not only in terms of the doctrinal and spiritual No. guidance it provided but also because of the influence Admit. it exerted upon the cultural and political life of the No. No. (Joyce, A Portrait, p.91) country. Roman Catholicism had long been a focus In spite of the ‘cuts of the cane and the blows of the of nationalist resistance against English colonialism, knotty stump’ (Ibid, p.91) that his refusal to admit elicits, such that “Irishness had come to be seen by many as Stephen steadfastly believes that Byron is the world’s synonymous with Catholicism” (Belanger, Introduction, greatest writer. This is an important step in Stephen’s xx-xıı). The Irish Ireland movement proclaimed that ability to form his own ideas, free from the ruling power “Ireland’s authentic cultural nationalist identity was of the society. Later, Stephen challenges his peers on unquestionably as a Gaelic and Catholic nation” (Brown, issues that are much more important. At the University cited in Belanger, Introduction, xxıı). However, the Irish College Stephen’s nationalist friend Davin asks: nationalist community was itself divided. On the one Are you Irish at all? [...] Why don't you learn Irish? Why did you drop out of the [Gaelic] league class after the first lesson? hand, people like Dante Riordan in A Portrait of the (Ibid, p.205) Artist as a Young Man proclaimed that Irish identity was inseparable from Catholicism. They argued that priests When confronted with these questions about his had a duty to guide their flocks in matters of politics and heritage, Stephen responds: “public morality” such as the Parnell affair, in which the When the soul of a man is born in this country there are former hero of the nationalist cause was pilloried for his nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.
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