"Cliff Notes - Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Joyce's sociable, witty, hard-drinking father, John Stanislaus, lost
his political job--as Stephen's father Simon loses his--after the
fall of the Irish leader and promoter of independence Charles Stewart
Parnell. Although the loss of the post was not directly related to
Parnell's fall, Joyce's father worshipped "the uncrowned king of
Ireland" and blamed his loss on anti-Parnell forces like the Roman
Catholic Church. (Joyce portrays the kind of strong emotions Parnell
stirred up in the Christmas dinner scene in Chapter One of Portrait
of the Artist.) Like Simon Dedalus, the jobless John Stanislaus Joyce
was forced to move his family frequently, often leaving rent bills
unpaid.

Joyce, though, seems to have taken a more cheerful view of his family
problems, and to have shown more patience with his irresponsible
father, than did his fictional hero. He seems to have inherited some
of his father's temperament; he could clown at times, and he laughed
so readily he was called "Sunny Jim." He also inherited a tenor voice
good enough to make him consider a concert career. Many believe that
musical talent is responsible for Joyce's gift for language.

Joyce's father was determined that his son have the finest possible
education, and though precarious family finances forced the boy to
move from school to school, he received a rigorous Jesuit education.
In Portrait of the Artist Joyce relives through Stephen the
intellectual and emotional struggles that came with his schooling.
Joyce's classmates admired the rebellious brilliance that questioned
authority, but--like some bright students whom you may know--he
remained an outsider, socially and intellectually.

The religious training he received in the Jesuit schools also shaped
Joyce, giving him first a faith to believe in and then a weight to
rebel against. Like Stephen, he was for a time devoutly
religious--then found that other attractions prevailed. By age
fourteen he had begun his sexual life furtively in Dublin brothels,
and though he was temporarily overwhelmed with remorse after a
religious retreat held at his Catholic school, he soon saw that he
could not lead the life of virtuous obedience demanded of a priest.
Instead, he exchanged religious devotion for devotion to writing.

As a student at University College in Dublin, Joyce studied Latin and
modern languages. Although the Gaelic League and other groups were
hoping to achieve Irish cultural independence from Great Britain by
promoting Irish literature and language, the nonconformist Joyce
spurned them. He felt closer to the less provincial trends
developing in continental Europe. He memorized whole pages of
Gustave Flaubert, the French pioneer of psychological realism and
author of Madame Bovary, whose precision of style and observation he
envied. He also admired the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, who
shocked the world by introducing previously forbidden subjects like
venereal disease and immorality among "respectable" citizens in his