David Herbert Lawrence and James Joyce are both the most influential writers in twentieth century. D.H. Lawrence’s first major work, the famous autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913) is a masterpiece in modernist literature. Joyce’s first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is also regarded as his semi-autobiography. The two novels tell us the maturing process of the two different protagonists—Paul, and Stephen Dedalus, especially their initiation of spiritual world. By reading and comparing the two novels the writer found that the two protagonists have somewhat similarities during their process of pursuit of normal life. Based on Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex, this paper aims to find out the similarities and differences of the two protagonists when they are faced with the Oedipus complex and attempt to provide the readers different angel to understand the two world-known modernists in literature.

Chen Ping. Flying beyond the Nets----Comparison Study between Paul in Sons and Lovers and Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2019) Vol. 2, Issue 3: 51-50. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.040071.

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