SBORNIK PRACI FILOZOFICKE FAKULTY B R N E N S K E U N I V E R Z I T Y STUDIA MINORA FACULTATIS PHILOSOPHICAE UNIVERSITATIS BRUNENSIS S 9,2003 — BRNO STUDIES IN ENGLISH 29 JIRI FLAJSAR IS THERE A NEW TREND IN LITERARY AND CULTURE CRITICISM? Epiphanic experience has been a typical reward for human attempts to make sense of natural and supernatural phenomena that are perceived, analyzed, and responded to by the mind. The literary epiphany is the narrative reconstruction, either individual or collective, of transcendent moments caused by such intense experience. The reader's response to an epiphanic moment, which is the locus of the literary epiphany, is powerful and the emotion conveyed goes beyond a sum of its quotidian agents. Drawing on recent analyses of epiphany in postmodern British and American fiction and poetry, this essay tries to justify the poetics of epiphany as a useful multidisciplinary approach to contemporary culture. In a 1997 essay, 'Postmodern Thoughts on the Visionary Moment', Paul Maltby analyzes the use of the visionary moment in postwar American fiction. His definition of the moment shares some features with the epiphanic moment explored in works written in the tradition exemplified by Wordsworth and Joyce. It occurs suddenly, its duration is brief, it cannot be summoned or prolonged at will (is involuntary), and it signifies that a spiritual rebirth either has occurred or will occur (120). Maltby argues that in American fiction from William Faulkner to Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, 'the visionary moment is susceptible to exposure as a literary convention—contrary to its claim to represent a credible, real-life experience' (122). This moment is a typical focus of narrative structure in real- ist fiction. Maltby acknowledges the utility of the epiphanic moment which 'can serve as a structural device, [. . .], a way of organizing a narrative around an incisively defined endpoint', as 'a narrational device, [. . .], a way of accel- erating or facilitating the story of a character's development, [. . .], an aesthetic device, [. . .], and a rhetorical device' (123-4). By contrast, authors of post- modern fiction, when consciously reacting to the tradition of epiphany in writ- ing, prefer to address epiphany through irony and parody. For example, 'the practice of organizing narratives around visionary moments' is ridiculed in fictions like Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Such works question the notion of epiphany as a structuring agent of narrative and carrier of stable and absolute meaning. 1