A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Signet Classics)

Author: Joyce, James

Brand: Signet

Color: Black

Binding: mass_market

Number Of Pages: 288

Release Date: 01-06-2006

Part Number: 9780451530158

Details: Product Description


A masterpiece of modern fiction, James Joyce’s semiautobiographical first novel follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist’s life.

“I will not serve,” vows Dedalus, “that in which I no longer believe…and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can.” Likening himself to God, Dedalus notes that the artist “remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” Joyce’s rendering of the impressions of childhood broke ground in the use of language. “He took on the almost infinite English language,” Jorge Luis Borges said once. “He wrote in a language invented by himself....Joyce brought a new music to English.” A bold literary experiment, this classic has had a huge and lasting influence on the contemporary novel.
 

With an Introduction by Langdon Hammer


Review


“Joyce’s work is not about the thing—it is the thing itself.”—Samuel Beckett

“Admirable.”—Jorge Luis Borges


About the Author


Born in Dublin, Ireland,
James Joyce (1882–1941) studied philosophy and languages at the Dublin College of the Royal University. He left Ireland in 1902 and went to Paris, but upon learning that his mother was dying, he returned to Dublin in 1903. After his mother’s death, Joyce taught school in Dublin and met Nora Barnacle, the woman who would be his lifelong companion. Joyce and Nora left Ireland in 1904 and traveled to Trieste, where Joyce taught languages at the Berlitz School. An attack of rheumatic fever in 1907 caused his vision to worsen throughout his life. Apart from one trip back to Dublin in 1912, Joyce spent the rest of his life on the Continent. Wealthy patrons subsidized his writing, and Joyce became the most influential novelist of the twentieth century. His writings include
Chamber Music (1907),
Dubliners (1914),
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916),
Exiles (1918),
Ulysses (1922),
Pomes Penyeach (1927), and
Finnegans Wake (1939).
 

Langdon Hammer, author of
Hart Crane and Allen Tate: Janus-Faced Modernism and numerous essays on modern and contemporary literature, is the chairman of the English Department at Yale University.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


Chapter One


"Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes."
ovid, metamorphoses, viii., 18.


ONCE UPON a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. . . .

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.


O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.


He sang that song. That was his song.


O, the green wothe botheth.


When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell.

His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano the sailor's hornpipe for him to dance. He danced:


  Tralala lala,
Tralala tralaladdy,
  Tralala lala,
  Tralala lala.


Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and mother but Uncle Charles was older than Dante.

Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back was for Parnell. Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper.

The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and mother. They were Eileen's father and mother. When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table.

His mother said:
—O, Stephen will apologise.

Dante said:
—O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes—

Pull out his eyes,
  Apologise,
  Apologise,
Pull out his eyes

EAN: 9780451530158

Package Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches

Languages: English