A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Full Version)

James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man follows Stephen Dedalus from his earliest sensations—half song, half story—through schoolyard humiliations, political quarrels at the family table, and the pressures of Catholic discipline. As Stephen’s intelligence sharpens, so do his conflicts: between obedience and desire, inherited loyalties and private vision, the safety of belonging and the loneliness of independence.

Revolutionary for its intimate style and psychological realism, the novel charts the making of an artist with a candor that was startling in its time. Joyce experiments with language that matures alongside Stephen, capturing consciousness as it forms—through memory, shame, ecstasy, and argument. At once a coming-of-age story and a daring aesthetic manifesto, the book remains a defining modernist classic about forging identity amid the competing claims of religion, family, and Ireland itself.

• Listeners who love classic coming-of-age stories that are intellectually searching and emotionally honest
• Fans of modernist literature interested in groundbreaking narrative voice and psychological depth
• Anyone drawn to themes of faith, rebellion, sexuality, and the costly pursuit of artistic freedom

James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish novelist and short-story writer whose innovations helped shape literary modernism. Born in Dublin and later living in continental Europe, he transformed personal and national experience into art with radical formal daring. Alongside Dubliners and the monumental Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man established Joyce’s reputation for rendering inner life with unprecedented precision. His work explores language, memory, religion, and Irish identity, influencing generations of writers and redefining what the novel could achieve.