Journal Article

Linguistic and Pictorial Portrait

الفريح، منهل عبدالرحمن

2025

Overview

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the narrator's attempt to sketch the portrait in memory is extremely complex and difficult to follow. Every time, the narrator's earnest efforts to paint a straight-line, unwavering portrayal end in terrible tragedies. The signifier \"portrait,\" however, gains significant strength and develops into a brand-new language and pictorial signified. With such enormous complexity, confusion, and tension, one could claim that this story is a linguistic and visual depiction. Additionally, this paper will bolster its claims using the ideas and theories of eminent critics like George Lucas, Paul De Man, and Jacques Derrida. The plot of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, being very intricate and challenging to follow, is the narrator's attempt to draw the portrait in recollection. The narrator's intense endeavors to draw an undeviating and linear portrait always culminate in appalling catastrophes. But the signifier 'portrait' acquires great power to become a new linguistic and pictorial signified. Thus, one can say that this novel is a linguistic and pictorial portrait with incredible intricacy, uncertainty, and strain. The recurrent use of the 'past', 'the past perfect'' and the 'passive' have drawn the narrator into a murky narrative which cannot enforce linearity since the very device, i.e., language, is already constantly non-linear.

• Publisher: جامعة أسوان -كلية الآداب
• Subject: البنية السردية / التشكيل اللغوي / المونتاج الأدبي