Apocalyptic patterns in twentieth-century fiction.

9780268033804

Apocalyptic patterns in twentieth-century fiction.

Leigh, David J.

U. of Notre Dame Press

2008

256 pages

$28.00

Paperback

PS374

Conducting readings of twenty major 20th century novels and two autobiographies in the English language, Leigh (English, Seattle U.) proposes to examine two fundamental questions: the innovative ways in which modern texts have used the apocalyptic tradition as found in the biblical Book of Revelation and other classic works dealing with the end of the world and the ways these literary apocalypses raise issues that call for philosophical and theological reflection. Following an introductory discussion of the apocalyptic tradition in Western literature, he presents thematic chapters discussing religious and secular approaches to the quest for transcendence and wholeness in an apocalyptic world in the novels of Walker Percy, Tomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo; cosmic battles of end-times in the science fiction of C.S. Lewis and Russell Hoban; the ultimate union of human and divine in the novels of Doris Lessing; the apocalyptic eschatology in the science fiction of Arthur Clarke, George Zebrowski, and Walter Miller, Jr.; the idea of the ultimate self in the human experience of dying in writings by John Updike and Charles Williams; the use of apocalyptic imagery to transform the world in African-American texts by Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison; and religious pluralism and the apocalyptic moment in works by Salman Rushdie and Shusaku Endo.

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