Joyce was the first Modernist to use the religious term epiphany to describe an unexpected
insight often within a trivial mundane biographical or fictional context. But prose fiction
around 1900 is full of similar concepts under various names: moment of vision moment of being
anderer Zustand mémoire involontaire. This book asks three questions: Where does the concept
of the epiphanic moment come from? What does it look like? Why was it so valuable for prose
fiction around 1900? Finally the study looks at the present use of the term only to discover
that «epiphany» has recently had an astonishing comeback - even Homer Simpson has had his
epiphany.
