Özet:

This paper examines two opposing views in terms of the construction of identity in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. First, Joyce sees the complex sense of historical forces, social institutions, culture, religion and politics as influencing both the perception and behaviors of individuals in the late nineteenth-century Irish society. Through the views of his fictional character, Stephen Dedalus, therefore, Joyce criticizes the "nets" of the Irish society, which limit individuals, never letting them express themselves freely. Secondly, the paper focuses upon the shift in the sensibility and perception of Stephen Dedalus. This shift enables him to expand psychologically and transcend not only beyond the actual experience of the physical world for an ideal view of life but also beyond the fixity of the traditional perception of identity. The paper suggests that Stephen Dedalus is a modernist character: he seeks his own identity and meaning in the complexity of modern experience through art, rather than accepting the identity given to him by traditional society and culture.

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