Chamber Music

Joyce's bildüngsroman--his first novel--traces the development of Stephen Daedalus, Joyce's alter ego. In order to pursue his artistic calling, Stephen, like Joyce, must reject his family, religion, and native land. At the end of the novel, Stephen is about to forsake Dublin for Paris. Joyce, in PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, was an early practitioner of the stream-of-consciousness technique, by means of which Stephen's interior life and growing self-awareness are rendered directly, so that the reader has access not only to his conscious thoughts but to his unconscious as well.