Abstract
This study sheds new light on the role of city whether real or fictional in modern novel as one of the signs of man’s cultural fate. For the same reason, city is not a mere physical place, but a spatial concept. Not only has city become inseparable from man’s personal and national destiny but also one’s life continues to unfold on city’s streets. James Joyce’s (1882-1941) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (A Portrait, 2000) deals with Joyce’s home, Dublin. Joyce aims to universalize and simultaneously eternalize his home through his art. Accordingly, the reader of his text is to decipher the cultural signs of Dublin to get into it. As Michael Ryan (1946-) refers to culture as the total way of life that it has multiple meanings; to understand the culture of a city, to read its meaning, one has to decipher it. Semiology, based on Roland Barthes (1915-1980), is the science of signs whose emphasis is on the interpretation of codes, signs and symbols in a particular culture. Thus, the culture of Dubliners portrayed in A Portrait can be decoded through semiology by the readers. Stephen Dedalus is one who deciphers the cultural signs such as paralysis, religion, prostitution and confession through his walking in Dublin. He considers them as nets of Dublin that he tries to escape from them.
Highlights
There is a close relationship between city and culture
The culture of Dubliners portrayed in A Portrait can be decoded through semiology by the readers
Since the discussion of this study is completely dedicated to the ‘semiology’ of city, it is concluded that the city is a text
Summary
There is a close relationship between city and culture. City can be examined as the representation of the pinnacle of human accomplishments in art work that is created by city itself. This study makes visible the mixture of culture and history raised in the act of reading the representative fiction of Joyce as textual coding In this regard, city is considered as a text. Desmond Harding, in Writing the City: Urban Visions & Literary Modernism, divides city novel into three main types: “portrait”, “ecological” and “synoptic” (7) Referring to his division, A Portrait can be considered as a city novel which belongs to the category of the portrait. In this type of novel, the city is revealed through the experiences of a single character, often a youth from the county In this regard, Joyce’s main character in A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, is a young man who discloses Dublin through his experiences while he is walking in the streets of his home. The paper is based on the elaboration of the ideas of Roland Barthes concerning semiology, and the idea of cultural identity of Michael Ryan
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