The Epiphanic Moment

Abstract

Allied to the idea of the ‘nouvelle-instant’ is Mansfield’s use of Joycean ‘epiphanies’,¹ or to use her own words, the ‘blazing moment’:

If we are not to look for facts and events in a novel — and why should we? — we must be very sure of finding those central points of significance transferred to the endeavours and emotions of the human beings portrayed…. The crisis, then, is the chief of our ‘central points of significance’ and the endeavours and the emotions are stages on our journey towards or away from it. For without it, the form of the novel, as we see it is lost. Without it, how are we to appreciate, the importance of ‘one spiritual event’ rather than another? What is to prevent each being unrelated — complete in itself — if the gradual unfolding in growing, gaining light is not to be followed by one blazing moment?²