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This book studies literary epiphany as a modality of character in the British and American novel. Epiphany presents a significant alternative to traditional models of linking the eye, the mind, and subject formation, an alternative that consistently attracts the language of spirituality, even in anti-supernatural texts. This book analyzes how these epiphanies become "spiritual" and how both character and narrative shape themselves like constellations around such moments. This study begins with James Joyce, ´inventor´ of literary epiphany, and Martin Heidegger, who used the ancient Greek concepts behind ´epiphaneia´ to re-define the concept of Being. Kim then offers readings of novels by Susan Warner, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner, each addressing a different form of epiphany.

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Opening the Subject: Joyce and Heidegger on Epiphany The Promise of Being: Spiritual Epiphany in The Wide, Wide World Reverse Projection: Moral Epiphany in Middlemarch The Dark Flash: Epiphany and Heredity in The House of Mirth The Mirror of Mental Ruin in To the Lighthouse The Look of the Other in The Bear

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Sharon Kim is a professor of English at Judson University.

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