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James Joyce and the Masturbating Boy
- James Joyce Quarterly
- The University of Tulsa
- Volume 50, Number 3, Spring 2013
- pp. 611-634
- 10.1353/jjq.2013.0040
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay connects Joyce’s depictions of masturbation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the partial legitimization of solitary sexual pleasure in sexology, arguing that new conceptions of autoerotic pleasure as a natural and potentially salubrious sexual outlet animate the novel’s treatment of Stephen Dedalus’s furtive masturbatory life as a subversive figure for personal and aesthetic autonomy.