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 Nichol |
Contents
| 37 | |
| 85 | |
| 101 | |
Alison Chapman | 115 |
Gene Bluestein | 137 |
Paul Devine | 155 |
Philipp Wolf | 177 |
Nigel Parke | 207 |
Caroline Blinder | 293 |
Grazia Cerulli | 309 |
Sjef Houppermans | 333 |
Martin Bidney | 353 |
Jay Losey | 375 |
Garrett Stewart | 401 |
Celia Wallhead | 421 |
Dermot Kelly | 435 |
Peter Liebregts | 233 |
Suzette Henke | 261 |
Carmen Concilio | 279 |
Ashton Nichols | 467 |
Notes on Contributors | 481 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Agee Agee's appears artist awareness Beckett becomes Beja Blake Cantos character Christina Rossetti chronotope consciousness contemporary dead death demonic epiphany described divine dream Elizabeth Bowen Emerson Emily emotional epiphanic mode essay eternal Evelyn's event experience eyes father Felpham fiction Freud genre Gogarty's Heaney Heaney's human imagination James Joyce Joyce's Kubrick's language Larkin Larkinian leitmotif light literary epiphany literature London lyrical manifestation material meaning memory mind modern modernist moments mother narrative narrator nature Neoplatonic Nichols novel object passage perception Philip Larkin poem poet poetic poetry Portrait postmodern Pound present Proust Ramsay reader reading reality reference revelation Romantic Rossetti Samuel Beckett scene Seamus Seamus Deane Seamus Heaney seems sense short story significance silence sonnet soul space speaker spiritual Stephen Dedalus Stephen Hero sudden symbolic T.S. Eliot temporal things transcendence Virginia Woolf vision visionary W.B. Yeats 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 56 - Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty : This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky;— All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God!
Page 56 - It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea. Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly.
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 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 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 Pea.k of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells : In truth, the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is...
Page 17 - 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.