Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I've just started re-reading Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I wanted to jot down something I'm noticing in part 2. Maybe the significance of it will come clear to me later, so I don't want to forget it...

Part 2 uses a lot of "Homeric" compound words, for want of a better word. We have, in a short space, "hollowsounding", "freshfaced", and "suddenrisen". In part 1, there aren't any, so this is a pretty marked change in style -- is it supposed to mark Stephen's sophistication? He's not reading Homer at this point in his education (I think). Although, come to think of it, the beginning of part 1 talks about the "moocow", so maybe this is a pretty direct way to show how Stephen's conceptions are becoming more sophisticated.

Added a bit later: In part 3, there are more compound words, this time focused around Stephen's religious epiphany (judgementseat, lurkingplace, bloodred, etc). Is it now part of the way Stephen looks at the world? The end of the book has Stephen conflating a girl and a bird -- maybe this is a prefiguring of the way he combines disparate concepts. I'll have to see if these words appear much outside of the sermon in this section.