A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

By James Joyce

1916

Modernist fiction

Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel, tracing the intellectual and spiritual awakening of Stephen Dedalus from infancy through his university years in turn-of-the-century Dublin. The book moves through five sections that grow in linguistic sophistication alongside their protagonist, covering Catholic schooling, a famously terrifying sermon on Hell, sexual guilt, a beach-side epiphany, and Stephen's eventual rejection of family, nation, and church in favour of art. A foundational text of literary modernism and a stepping stone to *Ulysses*.