From Tragedy To Apocalypse In American Literature

Author : Lin Atnip
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781666925593

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From Tragedy to Apocalypse in American Literature by Lin Atnip Pdf

From Tragedy to Apocalypse in American Literature: Reading to Make Sense of Our Endings argues that imaginative literature is essential to comprehending contemporary threats to the survival of the human species and the preservation of our humanity. Atnip outlines a theory of reading which directs us to realities and imperatives that are ignored, denied, or distorted by dominant social conventions and habits of cognition. She then puts this theory into practice through readings of postwar American works by Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy, and Norman Maclean. This book argues that these texts collectively educate us to a new ground of sense—the apocalyptic sublime—and the need for an unending effort to comprehend what it means to live a human life against this inhuman background.

Author : Zbigniew Lewicki
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1984-04-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015008868401

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The Bang and the Whimper by Zbigniew Lewicki Pdf

Author : John Hay
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : American literature
ISBN : 1108725597

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Apocalypse and American Literature and Culture by John Hay Pdf

"In addition to evoking western lands and democratic politics, the very name of America has also encouraged apocalyptic visions. The "American Dream" has not only been about the prospect of material prosperity; it has also been about the end of the world. Final forecasts constitute one of America's oldest literary genres, extending from the eschatological theology of the New England Puritans to the revolutionary discourse of the early republic, the emancipatory rhetoric of the Civil War, the anxious fantasies of the atomic age, and the doomsday digital media of today. For those studying the history of America, renditions of the apocalypse are simply unavoidable. This collection brings together two dozen essays by prominent scholars that explore the meanings of apocalypse across different periods, regions, genres, registers, modes, and traditions of American literature and culture. It locates the logic and rhetoric of apocalypse at the very core of American literary history"--

Author : Lois Parkinson Zamora
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1989-04-28
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0521362237

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Writing the Apocalypse by Lois Parkinson Zamora Pdf

This is a comparative literary study of apocalyptic themes and narrative techniques in the contemporary North and Latin American novel. Zamora explores the history of the myth of apocalypse, from the Bible to medieval and later interpretations, and relates this to the development of American apocalyptic attitudes. She demonstrates that the symbolic tensions inherent in the apocalytic myth have special meaning for postmodern writers. Zamora focuses her examination on the relationship between the temporal ends and the narrative endings in the works of six major novelists: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortazar, John Barth, Walker Percy, and Carlos Fuentes. Distinguished by its unique, cross-cultural perspective, this book addresses the question of the apocalypse as a matter of intellectual and literary history. Zamora's analysis will enlighten both scholars of North and Latin American literature and readers of contemporary fiction.

Author : Cormac McCarthy
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2007-03-20
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780307267450

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy Pdf

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). • From the bestselling author of The Passenger A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Author : Douglas Robinson
Publisher : Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015007060240

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American Apocalypses by Douglas Robinson Pdf

Author : Dan Sinykin
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2020-03-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780198852704

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American Literature and the Long Downturn by Dan Sinykin Pdf

Apocalypse shapes the experience of millions of Americans. Not because they face imminent cataclysm, however true this is, but because apocalypse is a story they tell themselves. It offers a way out of an otherwise irredeemably unjust world. Adherence to it obscures that it is a story, rather than a description of reality. And it is old. Since its origins among Jewish writers in the first centuries BCE, apocalypse has recurred as a tempting and available form through which to express a sense of hopelessness. Why has it appeared with such force in the US now? What does it mean? This book argues that to find the meaning of our apocalyptic times we need to look at the economics of the last five decades, from the end of the postwar boom. After historian Robert Brenner, this volume calls this period the long downturn. Though it might seem abstract, the economics of the long downturn worked its way into the most intimate experiences of everyday life, including the fear that there would be no tomorrow, and this fear takes the form of 'neoliberal apocalypse'. The varieties of neoliberal apocalypse--horror at the nation's commitment to a racist, exclusionary economic system; resentment about threats to white supremacy; apprehension that the nation has unleashed a violence that will consume it; claustrophobia within the limited scripts of neoliberalism; suffocation under the weight of debt--together form the discordant chord that hums under American life in the twenty-first century. For many of us, for different reasons, it feels like the end is coming soon and this book explores how we came to this, and what it has meant for literature.

Author : James Berger
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0816629323

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After the End by James Berger Pdf

In this study of the cultural pursuit of the end and what follows, Berger contends that every apocalyptic depiction leaves something behind, some mixture of paradise and wasteland. Combining literary, psychoanalytic, and historical methods, Berger mines these depictions for their weight and influence on current culture. He applies wide-ranging evidence--from science fiction to Holocaust literature, from Thomas Pynchon to talk shows, from American politics to the fiction of Toni Morrison--to reveal how representations of apocalyptic endings are indelibly marked by catastrophic histories.

Author : R M Christofides
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2012-06-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781441101303

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Shakespeare and the Apocalypse by R M Christofides Pdf

By connecting Shakespeare's language to the stunning artwork that depicted the end of the world, this study provides not only provides a new reading of Shakespeare but illustrates how apocalyptic art continues to influence popular culture today. Drawing on extant examples of medieval imagery, Roger Christofides uses poststructuralist and psychoanalytic accounts of how language works to shed new light on our understanding of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. He then links Shakespeare's dependence on his audience to appreciate the allusions made to the religious paintings to the present day. For instance, popular television series like Battlestar Galactica, seminal horror movies such as An American Werewolf in London and Carrie and recent novels like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. All draw on imagery that can be traced directly back to the depictions of the Doom, an indication of the cultural power these vivid imaginings of the end of the world have in Shakespeare's day and now.

Author : Laurence W. Mazzeno,Sue Norton
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2022-04-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783030941666

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Contemporary American Fiction in the European Classroom by Laurence W. Mazzeno,Sue Norton Pdf

This book offers insight into the ways students enrolled in European classrooms in higher education come to understand American experience through its literary fiction, which for decades has been a key component of English department offerings and American Studies curricula across the continent and in Great Britain and Ireland. The essays provide an understanding of how post-World War II American writers, some already elevated to ‘canonical status’ and some not, are represented in European university classrooms and why they have been chosen for inclusion in coursework. The book will be of interest to scholars and teachers of American literature and American studies, and to students in American literature and American studies courses.

Author : David Lyle Jeffrey
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 1000 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0802836348

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A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature by David Lyle Jeffrey Pdf

Over 15 years in the making, an unprecedented one-volume reference work. Many of today's students and teachers of literature, lacking a familiarity with the Bible, are largely ignorant of how Biblical tradition has influenced and infused English literature through the centuries. An invaluable research tool. Contains nearly 800 encyclopedic articles written by a distinguished international roster of 190 contributors. Three detailed annotated bibliographies. Cross-references throughout.

Author : C. A. Patrides,Joseph Anthony Wittreich
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : History
ISBN : 0719017300

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The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature by C. A. Patrides,Joseph Anthony Wittreich Pdf

This remarkable collection of original essays by a distinguished group of American and English scholars explores attitudes toward apocalyptic thought and the Book of Revelation as they were reflected, over many centuries, in theological discourse, political activity, and artistic and literary endeavors.

Author : Carly Osborn
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2020-05-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350083509

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Tragic Novels, René Girard and the American Dream by Carly Osborn Pdf

This book draws on the philosopher René Girard to argue that three twentieth-century American novels (Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides, Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road) are tragedies. Until now, Girardian literary analysis has generally focused on representations of human desire in texts, and neglected both other emotions and the place of tragedy. Carly Osborn addresses these omissions by using Girardian theory to present evidence that novels can indeed be tragedies. The book advances the scholarship of tragedy that has run from Aristotle to Nietzsche to Terry Eagleton, proposing a new way to read modern novels through ancient traditions. In addition, this is the first work to examine the place of women as victims, or in Girardian terms, 'scapegoats', in twentieth century fiction, specifically by considering the representation of women's bodies and ambivalence about their identities. In deploying a rich and vivid array of tragic tropes, The Virgin Suicides, The Ice Storm, and Revolutionary Road participate in a deep-rooted American tragic tradition. Tragic Novels, the American Dream and René Girard will be of interest to those working at the intersection of philosophy and literature, as well as Girard specialists.

Author : C. A. Patrides,Joseph Anthony Wittreich
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Apocalypse in literature
ISBN : 0719017300

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The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature by C. A. Patrides,Joseph Anthony Wittreich Pdf

This remarkable collection of original essays by a distinguished group of American and English scholars explores attitudes toward apocalyptic thought and the Book of Revelation as they were reflected, over many centuries, in theological discourse, political activity, and artistic and literary endeavors.

Author : Alice Bennett
Publisher : Springer
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2012-07-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781137022691

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Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction by Alice Bennett Pdf

Afterlife and Narrative explores why life after death is such a potent cultural concept today, and why it is such an attractive prospect for modern fiction. The book mines a rich vein of imagined afterlives, from the temporal experiments of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to narration from heaven in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones .