I am trying to make sense of the complete cycle from the point when a user issues a request from the browser to the point response is rendered for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC.
UPDATE:
Specifically, the concept of Page LifeCycle does not exist in ASP.NET MVC.
If the answer compares both these technologies from that view point it would be great.
That's an awful lot to ask for a simple question on a Q & A Forum site. It is pretty close to the definition of "not a real question" per the guidelines of the site:
It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form
It is a real question in most senses, and a good one, but it is overly broad for a simple answer.
However, in the spirit of trying to be helpful, here are a few links that might be helpful:
Personally, I like the explanation that came out in the older books from when ASP.NET and .NET in general were "the new thing". Every one of them did a good job of explaining the difference between static HTML and "dynamic" technologies like CGI, classic ASP, JSP, and then went into how ASP.NET works. Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with C# from Wrox was the first book I read on the subject.