A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Kunstlerroman 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.