Study Questions

1. Describe Stephen’s attitude toward school at the start of Chapter Five.

2. What does Davin call Stephen?

3. What is the “useful art” the dean of studies promises to teach Stephen?

4. What are the two primary influences on Stephen’s artistic theory?

5. What is Davin’s objection to Stephen’s “revolt” against religion, family, and nation?

6. What characteristic of Lynch’s speech does Stephen identify with “culture”?

7. What, according to Stephen, are the three basic forms of art?

8. What kind of poem does Stephen compose in the middle of Chapter Five?

9. Describe the attitude which the other students take toward Temple.

10. When Lynch asks Stephen if he loves his mother, what does Stephen say?

Answers

1. Stephen has a casual, even lackadaisical attitude toward his schoolwork at the start of Chapter Five. He is late for lecture, and has to borrow a scrap of notepaper from Moynihan.

2. Davin calls Stephen “Stevie.”

3. The dean of studies promises to teach Stephen the “useful art” of starting a fire in a fireplace.

4. Stephen’s artistic theory is based heavily on the work of Aristotle and Aquinas.

5. Davin feels that an individual’s primary responsibility is to his or her country, and feels that Stephen is betraying Ireland in favor of abstract, selfish aims—a view with which Stephen does not disagree.

6. Stephen recognizes Lynch’s use of “yellow” as an expletive to be an example of his “culture.”

7. Stephen recognizes the three basic forms of art as the lyrical, the epical, and the tragic. The tragic is the most important, since it is when the artist is able to remove himself or herself from the creation as completely as possible.

8. Stephen composes a villanelle, a strict form which consists of only two rhymes (“ways” and “rim”), five three-line stanzas, a final quatrain, and a pattern of repetition.

9. The other students tease Temple constantly, and don’t take his ideas seriously.

10. Stephen replies that he does not understand the question.