"A Portrait" Analysis Chapter 5.1

"A Portrait" Analysis Chapter 5.1

1. Politics and friends

   • Cranly
     • Related to religion and Church
       • A head and a face without a body
         • Rejection of senses
       • Priestlike
       • Womanish eyes
       • He told him many private thoughts and never got an answer
         • Religion never provided answers
         • Confession
   • Davin
     • Peasant student
       • Starving Irish village
     • Davin uncle Mat
       • Young fenian
         • Radical Irish nationalist devoted to Irish heritage and hostile to European influences
     • Asks Stephen why he doesn't learn Irish and is not one of them
       • Stephen states his independence: flying by the nets of nationality, religion and language
   • Irish nationalism associated with naiveti and provincialism
     • Art that embodies national myths is untrue and unimportant
   • Univestity associated with the establishment (British colonial power and Catholic Church)

2. Aesthetic theory

   • The dean of studies
     • Indifference and contempt for formal education
     • Frustration with Irish language
       • Related to his artistic ambition
         • English always an acquired language
         • Hir Irishness obstacles his desire to entre the illustious history of literature in the English language
         • Paradox: by the end of the novel he will use English as a tool to voice the soul of the imprisoned Irish race
   • Lynch
     • Art
       • Real = static
         • it raises the mind above human passions
       • Bad = kinetic
         • It plunges the mind into passion (merely physical)
     • Beauty and truth
       • For Plato beauty = splendor of truth (both create mental paralysis)
       • Beauty is perceived by senses
       • Truth is understood
       • The quality of beauty
         • Aquina' s 3 phases of apprehension
           • Wholeness
             • The object as a whole
           • Harmony
             • Harmony of its parts
           • Radiance
             • The artist discovers and describes its divine purpose
   • His ideas clash with his experience
     • He speaks of separating the perceived object from all else, but he understands things by relating them to many other objects and memories
     • Bad art plunges the mind into passions, but his work arised from passion and senses