James Joyce’s cubist portrait of the artist

James Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), marked a significant break with traditional modes of narration, representing a transitional point in the conception of the novel. An examination of A Portrait in the context of contemporary movements in the visual arts, specifically Cubism, sheds light on its narrative innovations and offers an insight into its ground-breaking literary techniques, in particular its focus on the individual, portraiture, fragmentation, emotional detachment, and the incorporation of a temporal dimension. Engaging with literary scholars, art historians, and theoreticians such as Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Carola Giedion-Welcker, this article undertakes a close reading of the text, alongside formal analyses of Cubist works, in order to demonstrate the affinity of Joyce’s literary endeavour, considered among the most significant of the twentieth century, with the visual arts, providing an insight into the aesthetic theory at the core of the novel. This article demonstrates that, contrary to what was previously thought, certain aspects of the Cubist aesthetic may already be observed in Joyce’s novel, preceding Ulysses (1922) by nearly a decade.