The Ordering Process of Narrative in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Regarding the literary historical debates, one of the main concerns of modern historiography is the way of representing the concept of reality within the framework of a coherent narrative, a reality that is only achievable through the process of narrative that is supposed to be constructive and ordering. Therefore, in order to examine this ordering process of narrative in James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (۱۹۱۶), as a modernist novel, this article attempts to approach the problem of narrative and history and the role of narrative in the representation of reality in this novel. However, in terms of Hayden White's theory of metahistory, Joyce's impositionalism of narrative on the emplotment of this novel is an attempt to form a line of narrative through the implication of textile and fabric images. To this end, the present study intends not only to unfold these sets of images presented in the novel but also to discuss the question of how this ordering process of narrative is achieved by means of such images in a constant aesthetic act.

Keywords:

historiography , Narrative , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , Hayden White , metahistory , impositionalism , emplotment