Abstract
The present paper sheds new light on the prominent role of man’s home whether real or fictional on the construction of his identity in James Joyce’s (1882-1941) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). One of the most pressing issues and cultural contradictions of modern world is the fate of individual identity in city life. A person is defined based on his cultural identity; and when the loss of that identity is imagined, one is confronted with the thought that he will lose his sense of self and cease to be what he is. The identity involves a repression that leads to a construction of stability and security that might not exist in reality. Peter J. Burke and Jane E. Stets declare that identity means ‘who you are’. Thus, to investigate one’s identity one has to find a way to the cultural context that the person is brought up in it. Michael Ryan (1946- ) asserts that culture is a set of unstated rules by which men live. It allows men to live together in communities by giving them shared signs and signals. Semiology, according to Roland Barthes (1915-1980), is the scientific way of deciphering the cultural signs and codes that pave the way to look into a distinct culture. Thus, it is impossible to know Joyce’s characters, in particular Stephen Dedalus, without enough knowledge of Dublin as Joyce’s home. Stephen metaphorically maps his home through which he can wander to shape and reshape his real self.
Highlights
Everyone has a right to a place called home and it is associated with safety, security, dignity and respect
The present paper aims at showing the impact of home or heimat on the construction of man’s cultural identity
The fate of individual identity is revealed in city life that is the combination of multiple factors such as social forces, historical background, culture and technique of life
Summary
Everyone has a right to a place called home and it is associated with safety, security, dignity and respect. Being without a home is being without that place in which there might be the possibility of being oneself, at ease, secure and at rest. Any notion of ‘home’ depends upon a complex mesh of material, social and emotional factors. It is clear that the concept of ‘home’ is inextricably interlinked with cultural value systems and social power relations. ‘Home’ is often a desire to establish a sense of belonging in cultural or national space. Home can be understood as an emotional investment that a person makes in a particular place, which may be reinforced by repeated, ritualized ways of being. Notions of ‘home’ are both deeply personal and are closely bound up in cultural and historical contexts
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