James Joyce’s Epiphany and Virginia Woolf’s “Moment of Importance”

In English literature, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the two best-known novelists of the “stream of consciousness”. Joyce’s novels are written in accordance with his theory of “epiphanies” and Virginia Woolf’s works are characterized by the “moment of importance”. Both writing techniques are characteristic of stream of consciousness in modern fiction yet there are some similarities and differences between them. This paper tries to make such a comparison. Key words: Stream of consciousness; Epiphany; Moment of importance