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NOTES, DOCUMENTS,
AND CRITICAL
OF JOYCE
THE EPIPHANIES
II
I
A COMMENT on Florence L. Walzl's essay, "The
LiturgyoftheEpiphanySeason and theEpiphaniesof
Joyce," PMLA, LXXX (Sept. 1965), 436-450. The
author of this essay has overlookedsome pertinent
factual materialon Joyce's Epiphanies. Rather than
take up some of her specificpoints forcorrectionor
I shouldlike to presenthereas muchas I
refutation,
have been able to discoverabout the Epiphanies in
several years of investigation,and invite others to
refuteor correctme wheremyfactsare inadequate or
myinferences
illogical.For convenienceI shallnumber
each itemand providegeneraldocumentation.
1. For Joyce the word "Epiphany" designateda
prosegenrein whichhe worked.
2. From 1900 to 1904 he wrote over seventy
Epiphaniesand put themtogetherin a fixedsequence
beginning with the famous "Pull out his eyes"
Epiphanywhichappears earlyin A Portrait.
3. Of these seventy-someEpiphanies, fortyhave
survived: twenty-twoof these are in the Lockwood
Collectionat the UniversityofBuffalo.Eighteenadditional Epiphaniesare in the CornellUniversityJoyce
Collection. All fortywere published by the NorthwesternUniversityPress in the springof 1965 in The
WorkshopofDaedalus, to whichthe readeris referred
for elaboration and documentationof the present
comments.
4. Joyceused his Epiphaniesas a skeletaloutlinefor
Stephen Hero, copying them in where appropriate,
withsomechangesto suitthecontext.
5. He later used some in A Portrait,and a fewin
Ulysses.
6. No knownEpiphanyhas beenfoundin Dubliners.
7. Joyceneverused the wordEpiphany in connectionwithDubliners,or as a termfora structuraldevice
in longerfiction.His own Epiphanies wereall recordings of actual experiencesor moods. None were invented.In fact,by his own definition,
theycould not
be inventedbut had to be recorded.
8. Thus the term"Epiphany" as all too commonly
used in discussionof Dublinersand Joyce'sotherfiction has nothingto do with the term"Epiphany" as
Joycehimselfused it.
9. Since Joycehimselfpre-emptedthe termto apply to one of the genresin whichhe worked,it would
seem appropriateforcriticsto followhis lead. To use
his word to referto an aspect of his workotherthan
the one he intendedby it is to gain a spuriousauthorityformanya tenuousaperCu,whichmightseemmuch
less impressiveifnot cloakedin the borrowedraiment
ofJoyce'sphraseology.
10. May I suggestthat forcriticsas well as poets,
"there'smoreenterprisein walkingnaked."
University
ofIowa
COMMENT
ROBERT SCHOLES
152
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153
213.
CompassEdition(NewYork,1956),p. 213.
in James
"Joyce'sEpiphanies,"
7Irene Hendry[Chayes],
1948),pp. 27-46.
andAquinas:The Theoryof
8 See MauriceBeebe,"Joyce
PQ, xxxvi (January1957), 30-34; Haskell
Aesthetics,"
Block,"The CriticalTheoryofJamesJoyce,"JAAC,vm
(March 1950), 181-184; Hugh Kenner,Dublin's Joyce
Ind., 1956), pp. 144-154; Geddes Mac(Bloomington,
Theoryin Joyce,"Life and Letters,LIV
Gregor,"Artistic
andAquinas
T. Noon,Joyce
(July1947),21-22;andWilliam
(NewHaven,1957),pp. 60-85.
9 S. L. Goldberg,The Classical Temper:A StudyofJames
"Joyce's
(December1943),93-114;ThomasE. Connolly,
Theory,"UKCR,xxiII (October1956),47-50;and
Aesthetic
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154
University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
III
All fortyof the extantEpiphanies have been available for some years. No scholar needed to wait for
theirpublication.But that is not the issue here.The
issue is a confusionof terminology
fostered,no doubt
accidentally,by many of the criticslisted in Mrs.
Walzl's reply,who take the termEpiphanyto referto
an artistic device which can be traced throughout
Joyce's work. Now lots of devices can be traced
throughoutJoyce's work but we are not obliged to
give them fancy Greek names with liturgicalovertones. Mrs. Walzl's list of quotationsshowsas well as
can be shown just how much of a cliche the term
Epiphany has become in Joyce criticism.Far from
aiding us in our reading,it has becomean obstacle to
an arid formulaforcrankingout ununderstanding,
necessaryinterpretations.
I suggestthat we put this
particular formulaaside, for the sake of the work
whichit tends to obscure,and, if we must writeon
IV
Two pointsmightbe made. First,it was Joyce,not
his critics,who,in a passage in StephenHero wherehe
specificallycites St. Thomas Aquinas, applied the
term epiphanyto certain intellectualapprehensions.
It seemsto me a definitionin sucha contextcannotbe
divorced from its philosophicaland religious overtones.
Second,the termepiphanyis a commonplacein the
to manifestations
of divinityin the
liturgy,referring
lifeof Christ.It was a familiartermto Joyce,and the
liturgists'view that in these epiphaniesthe narration
of eventsleads to a revelationof theiressentialspiritual significance
seemsreflectedin Joyce'sview of the
epiphanyas an illuminationof the spiritualessenceof
an object or experience.Since Joyce used scholastic
and liturgicaltermsin variouscontexts,it is my view
that a studyof theiroriginalmeaningtendsto illuminate,ratherthanobscure,his definitions
and to clarify
his ownlaterpracticesin fiction.
FLORENCE
Univtersity
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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L. WALZL