James Joyce: Barnacle Goose and Lapwing

• Published in: PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
• Main Author: Beebe, Maurice
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Modern Language Association (MLA) 1956
• Subjects: Barnacle goose
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/460705; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0030812900011068

It Is a paradox that James Joyce, exemplar of the artist-as-exile, was one of the most domestic of modern writers—“very much a family man, a devoted husband, a good father, and a loyal son.” For Stephen Dedalus, the artist as young man, the artist as family man would have seemed a contradiction in terms. The true artist, Stephen insisted, must free himself from allegiance to home and family as well as country and church. The paradox is no problem for those critics who, dissociating Joyce from his fictional counterpart, consider Stephen less a portrait than a parody of the artist and his theory of art one that Joyce either never took seriously or eventually rejected. If, however, the testimony of Joyce's brother and others who knew him in Dublin may be accepted, the young Joyce was a good deal like Stephen in situation, manners, and temperament; and the ideas on art and artist which appear in Joyce's early essays and notebooks are virtually the same as those expounded by Stephen. This is not to say that the Joyce who wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses is identical with the Joyce-Stephen presented in the novels. Between the time depicted and the time of writing occurred several events, including his elopement with Nora Barnacle in October 1904, which changed the artist's outlook. Yet, if Joyce looked back on the foibles of his youth with amused detachment and described them with irony, he was ready to admit the relationship between author and hero. “Many writers have written about themselves,” he said to Frank Budgen, “I wonder if any of them has been as candid as I have.”