ABSTRACT
Like many other stalwarts of the Modernist era, James Joyce too is found to be engaging with myths in his seminal works. Myths are integral parts of the crux of each of his three novels. While the significance of the mythical elements in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake have been discussed multiple times, there seem to be a scope for conducting a study of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, on similar lines. This chapter will focus on the usage of myths as well as archetypes in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Through studying significant portions of the text through the lens of mythical and archetypal criticism, this chapter will explain why and how the generic affiliations of this work contributed to the creation of the mythical and archetypal overtones found in the plot and the protagonist of the novel.
