James Joyce: From Hero to Author of the Bildungsroman

When James Joyce went to Paris as a young man in 1902, he followed a narrative arc fundamental to the European Bildungsromane. Comparing Joyce’s motives and decisions with those of his fictional predecessors in novels by Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others, I argue that he acted at first as an unwitting and unreconstructed hero of the genre but that, as he wrote the last two stories for Dubliners in 1906-1907, he earned greater perspective over his life and writing. Little Chandler, Gallaher, and Gabriel Conroy proved to be especially important catalysts for a Joyce in evolution from hero to author of his own Bildungsroman.