Composition
Portrait is a rewrite of Joyce's earlier attempt at the story as written in Stephen Hero, with which he grew frustrated in 1905. The story was changed considerably to emphasize the psychological experience of Stephen Dedalus. For instance, several of his siblings were major characters of the earlier version, but are almost completely absent in Portrait. The incomplete first draft of Stephen Hero was published posthumously in 1944.
Read more about this topic: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)