Log24

Epiphany

“A related epiphanic question, second only in interest to the question of the nature of epiphany, is how Joyce came by the term. The religious implications would have been obvious to Joyce: no Irish Catholic child could fail to hear of and to understand the name of the liturgical feast celebrated on January 6. But why does Joyce appropriate the term for his literary theory? Oliver St. John Gogarty (the prototype of the Buck Mulligan of Ulysses)… has this to say: ‘Probably Father Darlington had taught him, as an aside in his Latin class– for Joyce knew no Greek– that ‘Epiphany’ meant ‘a shining forth.'”

— William T. Noon, Society of Jesus,
Chapter 4 of Joyce and Aquinas,
Yale University Press, 1957

Epigraphs to The Shining, by Stephen King:

For more about shining, click on the star.