Modernist Literature and Culture

In modernism, that fleeting and delicate moment was termed an epiphany by James Joyce in the abortive draft version of his first novel, published posthumously as Stephen Hero. While the small differences of perception and emphasis re interesting to note, there is an important group similarity between Joyce’s epiphany (a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. His protagonist describes it: the most delicate and evanescent of movements) and a tradition of natural supernaturalism (Thomas Carlye’s phrase) going back to William Words Worth’s spots of time (as evoked in Book XI of The prelude), and including most notably W.B. Yeats’s heaven blazing into the head, moments when one was blessed and could bless and Woolfs movements of being.