The Five-Stage Model of the Epiphanic Plot: Structure, Functions and Typology of Sudden Revelation in Modern Prose

Abstract

Epiphany a sudden, quasi-revelatory moment in which a character perceives the hidden essence of a person, an object, a situation or his or her own life – is one of the key structural phenomena of modern prose. Although the term has been widely discussed since James Joyce's Stephen Hero, literary scholarship has most often treated epiphany as an isolated moment of perception or as a stylistic device rather than as a principle that organises the whole plot. This article proposes and substantiates a five-stage model of the epiphanic plot comprising stasis, accumulation, catalyst, revelation and reconfiguration. The material of the study consists of four canonical works of short prose: J. Joyce's "Araby" (1914), A.P. Chekhov's "The Student" (1894), L.N. Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886) and K. Mansfield's "Bliss" (1918). Structural-semantic, narratological, comparative-typological and motif analysis were applied, supported by Aristotle's concept of anagnorisis, M. Beja's criteria of incongruity and insularity, R. Langbaum's notion of the epiphanic mode, Yu.M. Lotman's theory of the event, G. Genette's narratology and Uzbek theoretical approaches to plot and conflict. The analysis demonstrates that in the epiphanic plot the decisive event is shifted from the plane of external action to the plane of perception: the culmination coincides not with a change of circumstances but with a change in the character's way of seeing. Each stage performs a distinct poetic function and is marked by recurrent textual signals – iterative narration, accumulating motifs, a disproportionately trivial trigger, temporal deceleration and imagery of light, and a reorganised final perception. On the basis of the fifth stage, four types of epiphanic outcome are distinguished: euphoric, disillusioning, redemptive and suspended. The model can serve as an analytical instrument for describing the plot structure of the modern short story and the psychological novel, including works of Uzbek literature.