A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero, the original manuscript of which Joyce partially destroyed in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, who asserted that it would never be published. A Kunstlerroman, or story of the personal development of an artist, it is a biographical coming-of-age novel in which Joyce depicts a gifted young man's gradual attainment of maturity and self-consciousness; the main character, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways based upon Joyce himself. Some hints of the techniques Joyce was to frequently employ in later works - such as the use of interior monologue and references to a character's psychic reality rather than his external surroundings - are evident in this novel. Joseph Strick directed a film of the book in 1977 starring Luke Johnston, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna and John Gielgud.

-- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.