Epiphany in literature refers generally to a visionary moment when a character has a sudden insight or realization that changes their understanding of themselves or their comprehension of the world.

[1] Author James Joyce first borrowed the religious term "Epiphany" and adopted it into a profane literary context in Stephen Hero (1904–1906), an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In that manuscript, Stephen Daedalus defines epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.

"[2] Stephen's epiphanies are moments of heightened poetic perception in the trivial aspects of everyday Dublin life, non-religious and non-mystical in nature.

In similar terms, Joyce experimented with epiphany throughout his career, from the short stories he wrote between 1898 and 1904 which were central to his early work, to his late novel Finnegans Wake (1939).

[6] In ancient Greek usage, the term often describes the visible manifestation of a god or goddess to mortal eyes, a form of theophany.

[7] Early Christians adopted the term to describe the manifestation of the child, Jesus to the Magi, which was understood figuratively as the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles and commemorated in the Catholic Feast of Epiphany, celebrated January 6.

I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.

The story, narrated in the first person, is about a boy and his friend Mahony taking a day off from school to seek adventure in their dull lives.

However, "The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself.

An older man approaches them and begins talk of such mundane subjects as reading Sir Walter Scott and boys having young sweethearts.

Joyce's brother Stanislaus wrote that the story was based on their encounter with an "elderly pederast" while playing truant.

[13] The boys' journey to the Pigeon House has been interpreted as a futile quest for Ireland's Church, like the visit to the bazaar "Araby", and the pervert they encounter has been taken as a counterpart to Father Flynn in "The Sisters".

[14] Through first-person narration, the reader is immersed at the start of the story in the drab life that people live on North Richmond Street, which seems to be illuminated only by the verve and imagination of the children who, despite the growing darkness that comes during the winter months, insist on playing "until [their] bodies glowed".

Even though the conditions of this neighbourhood leave much to be desired, the children's play is infused with their almost magical way of perceiving the world, which the narrator dutifully conveys to the reader: Our shouts echoed in the silent street.

On one rainy evening, the boy secludes himself in a soundless, dark drawing-room and gives his feelings for her full release: "I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love!

By the time he actually speaks to her, he has built up such an unrealistic idea of her that he can barely put sentences together: "When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer.

But the narrator recovers splendidly: when Mangan's sister dolefully states that she will not be able to go to Araby, he gallantly offers to bring something back for her.

[17] A young woman, Eveline, of about nineteen years of age sits by her window, waiting to leave home.

When Frank is referred to as Eveline's "lover", it's only in the sense that they are romantically involved: the word didn't have its current meaning until the 1920s (OED).

[18] One Joyce critic finds Eveline's inability to leave Dublin with Frank to start a new life "the most nearly straightforward expression of paralysis" in the collection.

The story centres on Gabriel Conroy, a teacher and part-time book reviewer, and explores the relationships he has with his family and friends.

Gabriel and his wife, Gretta, arrive late to an annual Christmas party, hosted by his aunts, Kate and Julia Morkan, who eagerly receive him.

When Freddy Malins arrives drunk, as the hosts of the party had feared, Aunt Kate asks Gabriel to make sure he is all right.

As the party moves on, Gabriel is confronted by Miss Ivors, an Irish nationalist, about his publishing a weekly literary column in the Unionist newspaper The Daily Express.

He becomes more disaffected, when he tells his wife of the encounter, and she expresses an interest in returning to visit her childhood home of Galway.

Gabriel stands at the window, watching the snow fall; and the narrative expands past him, edging into the surreal, and encompassing the entirety of Ireland.

[31] The main plot points of The Prelude center upon the exploration of epiphany, which Wordsworth presents as vital to the history of his imagination.

[33] "There are in our existence spots of time,/ That with distinct pre-eminence retain,/ A renovating virtue, whence--depressed/ By false opinion and contentious thought,/ Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,/ In trivial occupations, and the round/ Of ordinary intercourse—our minds/ Are nourished and invisibly repaired;/ A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,/ That penetrates, enables us to mount,/ When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen./ This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks/ Among those passages of life that give/ Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,/ The mind is lord and master—outward sense/ The obedient servant of her will.

"[33]The language Wordsworth uses within this excerpt suggests that he has had many 'spots of time' that he could draw upon from his memory that could give him strength as they release to him a sense of epiphany in his new realisation of seeing the world in a recollection of youth.