Epiphanies

1. Joyce’s Epiphanies Epiphanies

2. The Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated in the Christian calendar on 6 January each year, and commemorates the revelation of Jesus’ divinity to the Magi, the three wise men who had followed the star to Christ’s birthplace. Derived from Greek, the word ‘epiphany’ means a sudden manifestation of deity. In Christian theology, it also means the manifestation of a hidden message for the benefit of others, a message for their salvation. Joyce gave the name epiphany to certain short sketches he wrote between 1898 and 1904, and the idea of the epiphany was central to much of his early published fiction.

3. Through his education at the Jesuit schools at Clongowes Wood and Belvedere College, Joyce was steeped in Catholic religious ideas. He even suggested that there was a certain resemblance between the mystery of transubstantiation [the conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ at consecration, only the appearances of bread and wine still remaining] in the Catholic mass and what he was trying to do as an artist, changing the bread of everyday life into something with permanent artistic life. In making this claim, Joyce envisaged himself as an artist/priest of the eternal imagination through whom the flesh becomes word. It’s no surprise, then, that he adapted the idea of epiphany to suit his own artistic ends.

4. Joyce himself never defined exactly what he meant by epiphany, but we get some idea of what it means from the way in which the character Stephen Daedalus defines it in Stephen Hero [Stephen Hero is a posthumously-published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce.Its published form reflects only a portion of an original manuscript, part of which was lost. Many of its ideas were used in composing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man], an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen says that epiphanies are a sudden and momentary showing forth or disclosure of one’s authentic inner self. This disclosure might manifest itself in speech, or gestures, or memorable phases of the mind.

5. Examples of Epiphanies: Stephen Dedalus, the main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, experienced his first epiphany when he was sixteen and in a boarding school.Oneday he goes back to his room. Depressed by his sins, he falls ill and makes a decision to reform himself. He goes to church for confession where the priest is very kind. So, Stephen finds a new course in life – he becomes a priest. Stephen’s second epiphany was when his life took another turn. He realizes that he cannot waste his life living as a priest. He wants to live in the real world and be creative like an artist. He sees some boys diving from the rocks, and sees and follows attractive girls standing in the water – this moment in the novel is Joyce’s “epiphany”. It is an emotional moment with an emotional meaning which marks a realization leading to a transformation in Stephen’s life.

6. Function of Epiphany The purpose of epiphany in a novel or a short story is to use it for the characters to point out a turning point in the plot in the near future. It may also be used to change the opinion of one character about other characters, events and places after a sudden awareness of the situation. It may also be a sign of a conclusion in the story.