A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is Joyce's first novel.Written in the modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyceand an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exilefrom Ireland to Europe.