Departed Integration

A Portrait of the artist as a Young Man is Joyce's autobiographical work. It is developed within the recognizable general framework of the Bildungsroman, more exactly, it belongs to Künstlerroman, which mainly presents the growth of the young artist. Portrait is Joyce's first novel, which wins the fame for Joyce and paves the way well for his next two great works.Bildungsroman, as a literary genre, has developed for centuries throughout the Europe and influenced the world literature. As a genre, Bildungsroman has got its own"Bildung", which traces from the classical Bildung originated in Germany to the modernist bildung worldwide. This thesis makes a tentative study of the Bildung in Portrait, with the statement that Portrait presents a hegemonic-coercive Bildung of the young artist in the converged contexts of the colonial rule, the rigid and conservative Church and the arbitrary patriarchal authority in modern Ireland. Unlike the dialectical harmony between the individual and the society shown in the classical Bildungsroman, Joyce's Bildungsroman presents a departed integration of the individual and society. That is, the hero is physically departed from the society but spiritual integrated with the nation. This"departed integration"not only accomplishes the hero's Bildung, moreover, it indicates the exiled Joyce's deep sympathy for his compatriots and anticipation of the revival of the nation.The body part of this thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter one focuses on the concept and the development of Bildung and its relation to Portrait. Chapter two points out the hegemonic institution's coerced integration imposed on Stephen's Bildung and Stephen's resistant departure from it. Chapter three brings forth Stephen's shift from coerced integration to the departed integration which signals the accomplishment of the hegemonic-coercive Bildung of the young artist.