The fallen artist : the influence of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" on James Joyce's "A portrait of the artist as a young man"

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the influence exerted by John Milton's Paradise Lost on James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Its main character, Stephen Dedalus, narrates some remarkable passages of his life, through his childhood and young age, and his passage from a state of innocence to his first sinful experiences, being the first taken by the hands of a woman. This work focuses on Stephen's sins and repentance, his unwillingness to serve, his non serviam, and the whole course of his sins, in which I claim to have been influenced by Milton's characters in Paradise Lost, Adam, Eve, and Satan. The concepts and theories used to define influence used in this work are Harold Bloom's revisionary ratios, Patrick Colm Hogan's psychology and economy of influence, and Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá's notion of influence as influx and inflow. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's tentative to propose an alternative to the ones who choose not to serve, as Milton failed to do, and be a true artificer of wor(l)ds.