All 4 Uses
epiphany
in
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
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- This wonderful story is centered around a dinner party on the Feast of the Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas.†
Chpt 2epiphany = sudden realization
- Stephen has an epiphany, a Joycean religio-aesthetic word for an awakening, of a wading girl, in which moment he experiences the sensation of beauty and harmony and radiance that convinces him he must be an artist.
Chpt 15 *
- Subsequent to this epiphany, Stephen begins to ruminate on his namesake, the crafter of wings for escape from a different island, whom he comes to think of as "hawklike."
Chpt 15
- They have gone to considerable expense on Epiphany, the second most important day of the Christmas season, the day the Christ child was revealed to the wise men.†
Chpt 25
Definitions:
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(1)
(epiphany) a sudden realization -- especially one of importanceJames Joyce coined common use of the term from Christianity where it refers to the moment it was realized that Jesus was divine. When capitalized, "Epiphany" references that day twelve days after Christmas -- January 6th.
The term was widely used by James Joyce in his critical writings, and the stories in Joyce's Dubliners are commonly called "epiphanies." -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Less commonly, as a proper noun Epiphany commemorates on January 6 how a star led the three wise men to baby Jesus twelve days after his birth.