Publisher's Synopsis
Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature and Cinema uses health and psychological humanities to explore literary and cinematic epiphanies. James Joyce first adopted the term "epiphany" from religious use to articulate moments in secular literature of luminous intensity or "sudden spiritual manifestation." This study develops and extends Joyce's use of epiphany through a range of literary and cinematic examples, from William Shakespeare to Sonia Sanchez and from Yasujiro Ozu to Jim Jarmusch. This wealth of epiphanies in the arts are important from a health humanities perspective in that they provide access to aesthetic experiences of wellbeing, joy, and human flowering. They also provide antidotes to aesthetics of anti-epiphany—a showing forth of terror, horror, and panic. Experiencing Epiphanies is accordingly both critical and affirmative, diagnostic and therapeutic. It uses critique to understand the increasing need for wellbeing in contemporary times, and it uses affirmation to develop underutilized resources in the arts for transforming, configuring and refiguring, our everyday lives.
