A portrait of the artist as a young man Artistic Development A portrait of the artist as a young man had various themes covering many areas. The main theme of the novel is the artistic development of the artist, Stephen, and this specifically refers to the development of the artist in the life of a national language. Stephen experiences many voices of Ireland as well as those of the writers of his upbringing. From all these voices emerges Stephen's aesthetic theory and his desire to find his own way of expressing himself. Stephen develops his own voice as a way to escape these constraints. One of the main constraints for the artist as Joyce describes his life is the Roman Catholic Church. However, it is both a constraint and an enabling condition for the artist's development. First, the Jesuit education Stephen receives provides him with in-depth knowledge of classical and medieval thinkers. It also structures Stephen's life in such a way as to provide him with a foundation for his development as a moral and intellectual person. In relation to his eventual development of a theory of art or an aesthetic theory, Stephen draws heavily on this tradition. In this theory he uses two central doctrines of the church. First, it revises the doctrine in a way of imagining the relationship between art and the world it describes. As Stephen develops his theory, he thinks of himself as taking on the role of a "priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of eternal life." The second use of Catholic doctrine or tradition refers to the creation of a priesthood, a class of men separated from the world who act as intermediaries between the deity and the people. In Stephen's idea of ​​the artist, he is like a priest, who performs the miracle of transforming life into art. Joyce is in good company when he uses techniques to drive a wedge into the all-encompassing authority of the church and other forms of seriousness, even that of the artist. Own. When Stephen eruditely discusses his aesthetic theory, his friend Lynch criticizes him. It brings lust into the picture of how and why art is created. He laughs at Stephen's deadly serious use of scholastics to develop a theory of art. At the beginning of the novel, when Mrs. Dante Riordan condemns Parnell and supports his excommunication from the Catholic church, Mr..