<i><b>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</b></i>&nbsp;is the first novel by Irish writer&nbsp;James Joyce. A&nbsp;K&uuml;nstlerroman&nbsp;in a&nbsp;modernist&nbsp;style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young&nbsp;Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to&nbsp;Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of&nbsp;Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe