Abstract
The article studies the manner in which Stephen, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, experiences reality through highly formalized and mediated modes of cognition. The incongruity between cognition and the subject’s awareness of it is played out in Stephen’s relations with other characters, in the discrepancy between the words spoken in dialogue and the much more elaborate mental process which takes place simultaneously but silently in his mind. His exchange with the dean of studies, moreover, shows that Stephen is unable to encounter the world without projecting onto it a grid of hypotheses where the answer is already potentially contained in the question, thus turning cognition into the mere saturation of a field outlined in advance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
“Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull,/On whom as in despite the sun looks pale,/Killing their fruit with frowns?” (William Shakespeare , Henry V 3.5.16–18).
Bibliography
Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Trans. E. S. Fouchier. Oxford: Blackwell, 1901.
Beckett, Samuel. Watt (1953). New York: Grove Press, 1959.
Budgen, Frank. James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses” (1934). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960.
Curran, Constantine. Struggle with Fortune: A Miscellany for the Centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland 1854–1954. Ed. Michael Tierney. Dublin: Browne and Nolan, n.d.
Ellmann, Richard. The Consciousness of Joyce. London: Faber, 1977.
Epictetus, The Discourses of Epictetus. Ed. George Long. London: George Bell and Sons, 1890.
Hackett, Felix. The Centenary History of the Literary and Historical Society of University College 1855–1955. Ed. James Meenan. Trallee: Kerryman, 1956.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Ed. Jeri Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
———. Œuvres, I. Ed. Jacques Aubert. Paris: Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), 1982.
Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Topia, A. (2018). Cognition as Drama: Stephen Dedalus’s Mental Workshop in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . In: Belluc, S., Bénéjam, V. (eds) Cognitive Joyce. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71994-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71994-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71993-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71994-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)