It is Stephen Dedalus's declared ambition 'to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use-silence, exile, and cunning.' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth and, in doing so, provides an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive in its style, the novel subtly and beautifully orchestrates the patterns of quotation and repetition instrumental in its hero's quest to create his own character, his own language, life, and art- 'to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.' Edited with an Introduction and Notes by SEAMUS DEANE