I had no idea that Stephen Deadalus, or Dedalus, was such an important character for Joyce. I have never read, "Ulysses", but I am curious to read how he characterizes the Stephen from that novel and compare it to the Stephen from, "Portrait".
Here is link to the Deadalus and Icarus myth:
http://galev06.physics.uoc.gr/daedalus.html
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_DedalusStephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and an important character in Joyce's "Ulysses". A number of critics, such as Harold Bloom, have named a younger Stephen as the narrator of the first three stories in "Dubliners".
In Stephen Hero, an early version of what became Portrait, Stephen's surname is spelled "Daedalus" in more precise allusion to Daedalus, the architect in Greek myth who was contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. Buck Mulligan makes reference to the mythological namesake in "Ulysses", telling Stephen, "Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!". In revising the mammoth Stephen Hero into the considerably more compact, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", Joyce shortened the name to "Dedalus".