Joyce's Epiphanies

The term ‘epiphany' derives from Greek and it means a sudden manifestation of deity; it also means the manifestation of a hidden message in Christian theology.

Joyce used the term to define some sketches he wrote between 1898 and 1904. According to the mystery of transubstantiation and what he was trying to do, Joyce imagined that flesh becomes word.

He did not define exactly what epiphany meant in his works, but thanks Stephen Daedalus' Stephen Hero we can say that epiphany is a sudden and momentary showing forth of one's authentic inner self. Other definitions of epiphany were given by Stanislaus (Joyce's brother) who said that it was ironical observations of errors and gestures by which people deceived the very things they were most careful to hide. Oliver St John Gogarty who was a friend of Joyce, held that an epiphany is a showing fort of the mind in which one gave oneself away. 

It can be supposed that Joyce may have been developing the idea of epiphany for some time before 1898 because he wrote sketches which were similar in style to what Joyce implies for epiphany.

Moments of Being

The moment of being is used in writing by Virginia Woolf who tries to say the moments of utmost intensity, perception, vision and awareness in r of innumerate atoms that strike people's mind everyday. Our mind receives a lot of impressions and in that moments in which things are perceived there is a moment of being; people are commune with the world.

V. Woolf holds that the human beings are not what they do but what they are, so the novel has to explore men's mental experience and consciousness.