ABSTRACT
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a novel by James Joyce published in 1916, is about the early years and youth of the character, Stephen Dedalus. It begins as follows:
At first sight this seems like pure nonsense. The sentences and clauses have no logical connection; the first sentence is unpunctuated and rambling; and there are words unknown to the English lexicon such as “nicens” or “botheth”. However, in spite of these linguistic and logical contraventions, it is possible to make some sense out of the passage. It should become clear reasonably quickly that the sequence is narrated from the point of view of a small child, who, rather than trying to make order out of the world, presents the way he is besieged by numerous sensations and impulses. Thus, the first page of the novel is an attempt to reproduce faithfully a child’s experience.
