Epiphany in the modernist short story: Italian and English perspectives

Thesis

This thesis reconsiders the phenomenon of literary epiphany in the early twentieth-century short story by comparing its occurrence in the work of four Italian and Anglophone authors: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), James Joyce (1882-1941), Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920), and Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). The decentred perspective allowed by this transnational comparison illuminates epiphanies as complex phenomena connected to multiple aspects of modernist culture. ‘Epiphany’ is considered here as a ‘blurred’ category of literary criticism, based on a family resemblance between independent artistic experiences developed in the same decades. Each author’s idea and use of epiphanies is considered separately, but within a common theoretical frame that brings out peculiarities and recurring themes. At least three common threads emerge, as a result, as general characteristics of modernist epiphanies. First, they participate in a phenomenological attempt to rediscover lived experience as a source of partial but reliable knowledge. Second, they are a result of the ‘inward turn’ and of the curiosity for the psyche’s deeper regions that are manifested through the logic of emotions. Third, they re-actualise mystical experiences as conduits to an authoritative insight that relies on unconscious structures to achieve a comprehensive view of life. The main appeal of these moments of enlightenment is precisely their lack of specificity. Far from revealing a truth, they establish an atmosphere of ambiguity where multiple and even contradictory interpretations are possible. By so doing, they succeed in evoking the undifferentiated creative potential that, according to the widespread vitalist philosophies of the age, constitutes the ultimate essence of life. In reframing ambiguity and indeterminacy as spaces of creation and choice, epiphanies thus bring out a lesser known, life-affirming but not naïve vein of modernist inspiration.

Authors: Taddei, V

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English and Italian
• Keywords: English literature; James Joyce; Federigo Tozzi; literary epiphanies; short stories; mysticism; Luigi Pirandello; phenomenology; Italian literature; 20th century; Katherine Mansfield; psychology
• Subjects: Short stories, Italian; Short stories, Commonwealth (English); Epiphanies; Modernism (Aesthetics); Comparative literature; Twentieth century; Modernism (Literature)