Framing a portrait of the artist : evolution in design

This research attempts to reframe our understanding of James Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in the light of Joyce’s theme of the artistic process, and in relation to the evidence of Joyce’s own artistic development. The reframing work is based on three operations: firstly, examining Joyce’s development in the light of related texts: Joyce’s early critical writings and antetextes. We trace Joyce’s intellectual and imaginative growth, both prior to the original “inception” point of Portrait in 1904, and from that time up to the point where, the original draft of the novel (Stephen Hero) having been abandoned, Joyce recast Portrait, in September 1907. The growth of Joyce’s ideas about art, creativity and the social responsibility of the artist, into a rich literary chronotope is examined. Secondly we re-examine the new historical concepts of intention and a work’s inception, from a Bakhtinianian perspective: theories of intention, the prosaic imagination and chronotope. The concept of “design” is explored, to encompass the purposive principles, intentions and form of the evolving novel. Thirdly, a reading of Portrait in relation to its chronotopic framing is advanced, using Bakhtin’s concept of “dialogic creative understanding”. Portrait is read as the story of the soul of a developing artist who comes, through a series of phases, to an understanding of his vocation in respect of three key chronotopic orientations: a social sense of responsibility; the importance of creativity in the highest service of art; the harnessing of the “plastic powers” of the artist imbued with a deeply rooted but dialogical sense of history