Abstract
This research paper, in a close textual analysis, examines the similarities and differences between Stephen Hero and
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Though Joyce makes autobiographical material the medium of expression
in both versions, they appear to give the impression that they are different texts in more than one sense of the word.
He suppresses some of the details he employed in the earlier version. In Stephen Hero, Joyce portrays the artist as a
romantic hero. The final version bears a new title. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man seems to be a systematic
account of the history of the protagonist’s growth, covering the first twenty two years of his life – from the time of
his birth in 1882 to his self-motivated banishment to Paris in 1904. How does Stephen counterbalance the
disenchantment of the heart caused by the ethos of the institutions of education with the enchantment of the heart
embodied in the romantic/epiphanic mode of education? Joyce appears more objective toward the autobiographical
material; he is more systematic and more logical in the presentation of the autobiographical material. The earlier
version appears to be a skeletal outline of Stephen’s concerns; here it is fleshed out with the circumstantial details
that underlie his choices. Joyce seems to have undergone transformation after having written the first version of his
early life. He undertakes to rewrite himself in a new version of himself which requires sophistication in the art of
expression as well.
Sajjad Ali Khan. (2020) The Politics of the Romantic Aesthetics: From James Joyce’s Stephen Hero to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, Volume 57, Issue-4.
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