Epiphany

The moment when the three wise men have the revelation that the baby Jesus is God’s messiah is the first use of the term ‘epiphany.’ James Joyce appropriated the term for literary applications, but it has never lost its original characteristics: it has to do with revelation and it has a spiritual dimension. The critic Valerie Shaw explains that

By an epiphany [Joyce] meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable expression of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.

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