ABSTRACT
Stephen Daedalus epitomises the fictional hero who wants to reinvent himself. Already in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce’s young protagonist vows to escape from the straitjacket of tradition and recreate himself in the ‘silver womb of imagination’. To this end Stephen declares that he will not serve that in which he no longer believes, whether it call itself faith, family or fatherland. ‘You talk to me of nationality, language and religion’, he retorts; ‘I will try to fly by these nets.’ And so, crafting his own narrative voice and invoking his own namesake as ‘fabulous artificer’, Daedalus sets out in the final pages of the novel to ‘forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race’. In short, Stephen is adamant that it is not history which will write his story but his story which will rewrite history. Or as he brazenly boasts to his Dublin classmates, he will not be remembered because of Ireland; it is Ireland that will be remembered because of him!
