The technique, moments of being by Woolf and epiphany by Joyce, are very difficult to clearly explain. Also their creator did not identify very well what they are. Both are moments of great awareness in which a person have an important revelation.

Woolf asserts that the moments of being reveals an hidden pattern behind the cotton wool of every day life. In this flash an individual is fully conscious of his experience and find a connection between his life and world that surrounds him. For Woolf there are also moments of non being in which the person are not conscious of his/her experience. For example there are some activity that people do without conscious. Thus action are not important to bring to light a moments of being, but the very important things is the intensity of the feelings in that action. This moments do not lead decisive  revelations for her characters. But they give moments of energy and awareness that allow the character who experiences them to see life more clearly and more fully.

Instead in Joyce characters the epiphany provides decisive revelation for them. It might manifest itself in vulgarities of speech, or gestures, or memorable phases of the mind.

For Joyce is not important the aspects of felling but it is the objet that can reveal important latent truth inside of the human mind.

To sum up the differences between the two technique are:

a) What generate the moment of awareness

b) What are the conclusion of his flash

To conclude the Woolf’s technique can be see as an expressionist paint in which is reflect the inner feeling of the observer.

The Joyce’s technique, instead, is an impressionist paint in which the external world generate a strong emotion in the observer. (Queste ultime righe non sono proprio sicuro che siano corrette dal punto di vista concettuale, però mi sembra di averci preso.)