A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. It is a semi-autobiographical novel chronicling the spiritual and intellectual awakening and rebellion of Stephen Dedalus against the conventions into which he was born. Exuberantly inventive in 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."