Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary EpiphanyBRILL, 2021 M11 22 - 496 pages ... a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase in the mind itself. Thus Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Stephen Hero: defines the phenomenon that has ever since been known as the literary epiphany. The essays gathered in this volume comprise a wide survey of this phenomenon. With recurrent reference to its most famous creators, notably William Wordsworth, who was the first to consciously explore and delineate those momentous spots in time in his Prelude, Walter Pater, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, this book intends to provide a broad and unbiased exploration into the various types and categories of the moment of moment that can be distinguished, ranging from William Blake, Ann Radcliffe and Charles Maturin through the nineteenth-century sonnet tradition and the naturalistic novel to modernist and postmodernist exponents such as Ezra Pound and Elizabeth Bowen, Philip larkin and Seamus Heaney, and include contributions by acclaimed experts in the field such as Martin Bidney, Robert Langbaum, Jay Losey, and Ashton Nichols. |
Contents
Acknowledgements | 9 |
Towards a Typology of Literary Epiphanies | 11 |
2 The Epiphanic Mode in Wordsworth and Modern Literature | 37 |
The Epiphany of Blakes Left Foot | 61 |
4 Epiphanic Reading in Ann Radclijfes The Mysteries of Udolpho | 85 |
Demonic Epiphany in Gothic Fiction | 101 |
6 Uncanny Epiphanies in the NineteenthCentury Sonnet Tradition | 115 |
7 The EmersonWhitman Tradition and Transcendental Materialism | 137 |
14 Things that do Speak in Elizabeth Bowens The Last September | 279 |
Photographic Aesthetics and Literary Illumination in Walker Evans and James Agees Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | 293 |
White Epiphanies in Wallace Stevens and Samuel Beckett | 309 |
Visions of Mourning | 333 |
Philip Larkins Epiphanies | 353 |
The Denial of Death in Larkin and Heaney | 375 |
20 Kubricks Odyssey as Filmic Epiphany | 401 |
21 Eros and Thanatos in the Epiphany in DM Thomass The White Hotel | 421 |
George Moores Evelyn Innes and The Lake | 155 |
Visionary Epiphanies Suddenness and History in the Later Work of WB Yeats | 177 |
10 Epiphany and Postcolonial Affect | 195 |
Rites of Passage in the Modern Epiphany | 207 |
Ezra Pound and Epiphany | 233 |
EnGendering Epiphany | 261 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Agee Agee's appears artist awareness Beckett becomes Beja Blake Cantos character Christina Rossetti chronotope consciousness contemporary dead death demonic epiphany described divine dream Elizabeth Bowen Emerson Emily emotional epiphanic mode essay eternal Evelyn's event experience eyes father Felpham fiction Freud genre Gogarty's Heaney Heaney's human imagination James Joyce Joyce's Kubrick's language Larkin Larkinian leitmotif light literary epiphany literature London lyrical manifestation material meaning memory mind modern modernist moments mother narrative narrator nature Neoplatonic Nichols novel object passage perception Philip Larkin poem poet poetic poetry Portrait postmodern Pound present Proust Ramsay reader reading reality reference revelation Romantic Rossetti Samuel Beckett scene Seamus Seamus Deane Seamus Heaney seems sense short story significance silence sonnet soul space speaker spiritual Stephen Dedalus Stephen Hero sudden symbolic T.S. Eliot temporal things transcendence Virginia Woolf vision visionary W.B. Yeats words Wordsworth writing Yeats