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Hunting Epiphany-Hunters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Sidney Feshbach
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Abstract

Robert Scholes's view that Joyce was primarily interested in constructing a genre composed of epiphanies as texts, and not equally interested in the epiphany as a process of esthetic apprehension or in the possible use of the epiphany as a structural principle, is disputed in these comments. This argument seeks to establish briefly that Joyce held the epiphany—process and text—as essentially integrated and inseparable. The comments are a response to Robert Scholes's correspondence with Florence Walzl (PMLA, March 1967).

Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , March 1972 , pp. 304 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 “Epiphany-hunting is a harmless pastime and ought probably to be condoned, like symbol-hunting, archetype-hunting, Scrabble, and other intellectual creations.” Scholes, “Joyce and the Epiphany: The Key to the Labyrinth?” Sewanee Review, 72 (1964), 66. Scholes and A. Walton Litz, eds., Dubliners (New York: Viking, 1969), p. 255. Scholes and R. M. Kain, eds., The Workshop of Daedalus (Evanston, 111. : Northwestern Univ. Press, 1965).

2 Correspondence of R. Scholes and Florence L. Walzl, PMLA, 82(1967), 152.

3 Scholes, “Towards a Poetics of Fiction: An Approach through Genre,” Novel, 2 (Winter 1969), 104.

4 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. T. Spencer (New York: New Directions, 1944), p. 211.

6 Stephen Hero, pp. 211–13. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. C. G. Anderson (New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 204–16.

6 Sewanee Review, p. 72.

7 Stephen Hero, p. 213; Portrait, p. 212.

8 See my essay on A Portrait, “A Slow and Dark Birth,” James Joyce Quarterly, 4 (1967), 289–300, and my forthcoming essays on “The Dead.”

9 Workshop, pp. 4–5.

10 James Joyce, Letters, eds. S. Gilbert and R. Ellmann (New York: Viking, 1966), ii, 35. Date given by Ellmann is 9 March; by Scholes, 20 March.

11 Workshop, p. 4.

12 Sewanee Review, p. 75.

13 Sewanee Review, p. 76.

14 Workshop, p. 15.

15 Portrait, pp. 67–68.

16 Portrait, pp. 67–70.

17 Portrait, p. 67.