The Conflicts of Stephen Dedalus: From the “Telemachiad” to “Aeolus”

Abstract

A virgin reading of Ulysses appears foiled at the outset by the appearance of Stephen Dedalus on the first page of the novel. He is introduced with an unfamiliar name (“Kinch”) and a characterization with a familiar resonance (“you fearful jesuit” [1.8]). But he is then immediately given a full name twice in the next paragraph. “Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus,” the narrative voice tells us and thereby identifies Mulligan’s silent interlocutor, who is described as “Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy” (1.11-13). It appears that the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has returned from Paris, and from the earlier novel, to commence his quest for artistic and spiritual fulfillment in this new novel. Is there a difference then, for the hypothetical virgin reader who picks up Ulysses without having first read Portrait, and for the reader already familiar with the considerable emotional baggage Stephen Dedalus accrued in his earlier works? I use the plural “works” here advisedly because just as one can persuasively argue that the Stephen Daedalus of Stephen Hero is a different personality from the Stephen Dedalus of Portrait, one can equally argue that there is no necessary continuity between the earlier fictions and the later Ulysses.KeywordsNational LibraryNewspaper OfficeGaping WoundWorld TheoryVivid MemoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.