Epiphany

In standard usage, epiphany refers to a revelation of divine power, specifically, to the manifestation of Christ. The term was appropriated by James Joyce in Stephen Hero (1905) to denote a sudden moment of insight, not necessarily of a religious nature. (In the novel, the artist-protagonist makes it a point to record these 'most delicate and evanescent of moments' conscientiously.) The concept is closely related to what other modernist authors such as Conrad, Woolf, and Mansfield term 'moment of vision', 'moment of being', or 'glimpse'; indeed Woolf usefully contrasts 'moments of being' to the barren 'moments of non-being' of ordinary, non-reflective consciousness. Epiphanies gain structural weight in narratives that focus on the stories unrolling within a character's consciousness ( see THOUGHT AND CONSCIOUSNESS REPRESENTATION (LITERATURE)), especially in * genres such as the * Bildungsroman, the story of initiation, and the story of recognition. 'Epiphanic endings' have become a standard form of * closure, and the structural potential of the device is strengthened by the inclusion of deceptive or false epiphanies (see Mansfield's 'Bliss' for a particularly striking example).