The Art of the Epiphany

In what follows I want to discuss one particular scene in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I want to examine the Joycean concept of epiphany which I believe to be closely linked with Impressionistic art and I shall conclude with some remarks about the representation of women that informs Joyce's writing. In the passage at the end of chapter IV in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus watches a girl in the river: A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea.…