Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary EpiphanyWim Tigges ... 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
| 9 | |
| 21 | |
| 37 | |
| 85 | |
| 101 | |
Alison Chapman | 115 |
Gene Bluestein | 137 |
Paul Devine | 155 |
Carmen Concilio | 279 |
Caroline Blinder | 293 |
Grazia Cerulli | 309 |
Sjef Houppermans | 333 |
Martin Bidney | 353 |
Jay Losey | 375 |
Garrett Stewart | 401 |
M Thomass The White Hotel | 421 |
Philipp Wolf | 177 |
Nigel Parke | 207 |
Peter Liebregts | 233 |
Suzette Henke | 261 |
Dermot Kelly | 435 |
Ashton Nichols | 467 |
Notes on Contributors | 481 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Agee Agee's appears artist awareness beauty becomes Beja Blake Cantos character Christina Rossetti consciousness dead death demonic epiphany described divine dream Elizabeth Bowen Emerson Emily emotional epiphanic mode essay eternal Evelyn's event experience eyes father Felpham fiction Finnegans Wake Gogarty's Gothic Heaney Heaney's human imagination James Joyce Joyce's language Larkin Larkinian leitmotif light literary epiphany literature London lyrical manifestation material meaning memory mind modern modernist moments mother mystical narrative narrator nature Neoplatonic Nichols novel object Ololon passage perception photographs Plotinus poem poet poetic poetry Portrait postmodern Pound present Proust Ramsay reader reading reality reference revelation Romantic Rossetti Samuel Beckett scene Seamus Heaney seems sense significance silence sonnet soul space speaker spiritual St Aubert Stephen Dedalus Stephen Hero sudden symbolic T.S. Eliot temporal things transcendence Virginia Woolf vision visionary voice W.B. Yeats Walker Evans Whitman words Wordsworth writing Yeats
Popular passages
Page 63 - What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Page 189 - Mundi , Troubles my sight : somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Page 284 - The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
Page 120 - NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room ; And hermits are contented with their cells , And students with their pensive citadels , Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy ; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is...
Page 139 - Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball ; I am nothing ; I see all ; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me ; I am part or parcel of God.
Page 16 - Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Page 119 - ... reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,— I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
Page 23 - For, don't you mark ? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted — better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.
Page 133 - Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. Remember me when no more, day by day, You tell me of our future that you planned; Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve; For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget...
Page 150 - Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.