Formality of the Style, Maturity of the Artist — Stylistic Analysis of a Poem in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Abstract

The language style in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man renders no uniformity. In fact the language style varies with the growth of the novel's protagonist Stephen Dedalus. By employing the way of stylistic analysis in terms of linguistic levels of phonology, lexicology and grammar, this paper is to objectively describe, precisely interpret and reasonably evaluate those foregrounded linguistic features presented in a poem which was written by the protagonist Stephen when he was a university student in order to explore enough proof to reveal the theme of this novel: Steven, the protagonist, grows into maturity as an artist with his language style developing into formality. Index Terms-A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, stylistic analysis, formality, maturity