When Gaps Matter: Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man vs. Dobychin’s The Town of N

Abstract

This paper provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dobychin’s The Town of N. Both works, situated within the Bildungsroman tradition and sharing striking thematic affinities, significantly diverge in their narrative architecture. This study employs Generative Narratology Framework (Timofeev, 2017) to integrate structural analysis with reader-response theory, thus utilizing a synthesis of Lubomír Doležel’s ontological possible-worlds theory and Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenological approach to “gaps” (Unbestimmtheitsstellen). The most compelling similarity between the two novels lies in the physical impairment of the protagonists, creating a radical shift in the reader’s role at the same time. In A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus’s myopia is established immediately; it serves as a lens for his growth as an artist. In contrast, Dobychin’s reader discovers the narrator’s visual impairment only in the final chapter of the novel. The omissions throughout Dobychin’s book are revealed as intentional strategies, forcing a retroactive “filling in” of the narrative, and thus helping the narrative to mature, while Joyce’s narrative matures alongside Stephen without the reader’s help, highlighting the contrasting ways in which both authors engage their readers in the narrative process.