A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Künstlerroman written in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s fictional alter ego, whose surname alludes to Daedalus, Greek mythology’s consummate craftsman. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen’s decision at the end of the novel-to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist-suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure.