On Stephan Dedalus and Aesthetics

Charles Le Brun - Dedalus and Icaro

Stephen Dedalus is the main character in James Joyce's novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This character develops a lengthy theory of aesthetics that is interesting in its own right.


Aesthetics - a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty - Merriam-Webster


The myth of Dedalus and Icarus is a theme that permeates James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. In the myth Daedalus, a great artisan and craftsman, and his son Icarus attempt to escape the island of Crete by means of wings Daedalus creates. Icarus flies to close to the sun and falls to his death while Dedalus escapes alone. Stephen Dedalus (note the obvious namesake, in fact the name Dedalus comes from the Greek meaning cunning worker) finds he must escape Ireland to grow into the artist and individual he desires to be, and even imagines himself taking wing much as his namesake does, as is suggested by the novel's opening epithet: "He turned his mind toward unknown arts," a quotation from the Daedalus section of Ovid's Metamorphoses.


Stephen's development of his own views of aethestics is an important part of his growth as a character and his eventual spiritual escape from the confines of his Irish surroundings. The character Stephen Dedalus combines classical aesthetic theories, namely the Poetics  of Aristotle and the writings of Thomas Aquinas with his own evolving ideas.

Before continuing, just a few cautions.


1. Stephen Dedalus is a fictional character. Directly attributing the following views on aesthetics to James Joyce is problematic. James Joyce created Stephen Dedalus to show the development of an artist, not necessarily himself.


2. Stephen Dedalus, even at the end of Portrait, is an artist still in development. What we see is a snapshot in time of an artist developing a sense of aesthetics, not necessarily a complete aesthetic theory. This is also true anytime you say "the ______ theory of _____ artist/philosopher ect...Attributing an absolute theory is problematic when it condenses a lifetime of evolving thought into a single theory.


The second of these two points is particularly important to the structure of Portrait of the Artist. Through the novel, Joyce depicts the development of Stephen Dedalus aesthetically, from contemplating simple sounds and feelings to a methodical, though incomplete and still developing theory of aesthetics indebted largely to Aquinas and Aristotle.


For example, Dedalus argues that artistic creation is a natural tendency of man, and drawing on Aquinas, that this tendency has a sensible aspect, for experiencing art through the senses and an intelligible aspects, as we contemplate and evaluate a work of art.


Stephen categorizes beauty into three types: Lyrical, wherein the artist relates his work to himself, epical, wherein the artist relates his work to both himself and to others, and dramatic, wherein the artist relates his work immediately to others. For example, a sonnet where the writer pours out his or her feelings is a lyrical work, a play where the action is directly seen by the audience is a dramatic work, and a novel, which is somewhere in between in a epical work. 


We should note, however, that Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man itself does not fit neatly into these categories. It is somewhere between the lyrical and the epical, as Joyce experiments with stream of consciousness techniques. This point ties in nicely with the cautions I mentioned above. These views on aesthetics are certainly inconsistent with the type of aesthetics James Joyce seems to have had when he wrote Portrait, so it is doubtful that James Joyce is here expounding his own views on aesthetics through Stephen dedalus. Furthmore, even at the end of Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is still an artist in development. His views on aesthetics, although a great deal advanced since the early chapters, are still evolving and developing. 


It is my opinion that the importance of the passages on aesthetics in Portrait of the Artist serve a different purpose in regards to the structure of the novel. First they show the development of Stephen as an artist, and aesthetics are certainly an important part of that. Second, they show the isolation of Stephen from his surroundings. He has evolved to a point where he has to transcend his Irish surroundings to become a better artist. When Stephen tries to talk to his classmates and even the dean of his university about his thoughts on aesthetics, they either mildly humor humor him but seem not to care, or they completely brush him off. Stephen has always been marked off from the other people around him due to his sensitive nature, but his interest in and views on aesthetics serve to further isolate him. He has to transcend his surroundings to continue his development as an artist.