Description: In the first book-length study of the comedic in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Roy Gottfried argues that, far from being a solemn work, Joyce's early masterpiece is covertly but determinedly comic. Specifically, he looks at the Portrait's narrative structure, the protagonist Stephen's conscious disavowal of humor, and Joyce's comic use of word-play, vulgarity, and gendered language to establish the work's doubled nature.

In Portrait of the Artist, Gottfried argues, Stephen attempts to put all humor away from him, perceiving it as a temptation to abandon his sense of high seriousness and mission. Routinely, however, the comedic intrudes, creating a shadow or a double that challenges the very nature of "portraiture".

Central to Gottfried's argument and method is a comparison of Portrait and the earlier Stephen Hero, in which Gottfried demonstrates how Joyce deliberately edited the more overtly comic Stephen Hero to create a Portrait in which the comedic is diffused and backgrounded but never erased, existing always just beyond or behind the text.

Gottfried also looks at Joyce's early theorizing about the comic, the development of his prose style across time, and the comedic influence of popular culture on Portrait. Challenging long-held assumptions in Joyce scholarship, Joyce's Comic Portrait is an original and lively contribution of interest to students and scholars alike.

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