
Post-Apocalyptic Culture
Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel
Teresa Heffernan(Author)
University of Toronto Press
Published on 26. February 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
218 pages
978-1-4426-2700-0 (ISBN)
Description
In Post-Apocalyptic Culture, Teresa Heffernan poses the question: what is at stake in a world that no longer believes in the power of the end? Although popular discourse increasingly understands apocalypse as synonymous with catastrophe, historically, in both its religious and secular usage, apocalypse was intricately linked to the emergence of a better world, to revelation, and to disclosure.
In this interdisciplinary study, Heffernan uses modernist and post-modernist novels as evidence of the diminished faith in the existence of an inherently meaningful end. Probing the cultural and historical reasons for this shift in the understanding of apocalypse, she also considers the political implications of living in a world that does not rely on revelation as an organizing principle.
With fascinating readings of works by William Faulkner, Don DeLillo, Ford Madox Ford, Toni Morrison, E.M. Forster, Salman Rushdie, D.H. Lawrence, and Angela Carter, Post-Apocalyptic Culture is a provocative study of how twentieth-century culture and society responded to a world in which a belief in the end had been exhausted.
In this interdisciplinary study, Heffernan uses modernist and post-modernist novels as evidence of the diminished faith in the existence of an inherently meaningful end. Probing the cultural and historical reasons for this shift in the understanding of apocalypse, she also considers the political implications of living in a world that does not rely on revelation as an organizing principle.
With fascinating readings of works by William Faulkner, Don DeLillo, Ford Madox Ford, Toni Morrison, E.M. Forster, Salman Rushdie, D.H. Lawrence, and Angela Carter, Post-Apocalyptic Culture is a provocative study of how twentieth-century culture and society responded to a world in which a belief in the end had been exhausted.
Reviews / Votes
"A useful starting point from which to examine the aesthetics of fiction being produced in the twenty-first century."; - Ivan Stacy (Modern Language Review) "Especially worthwhile for students of apocalypticism and also for students of twentieth-century fiction." - Jesse Wolfe (Kritikon Litterarum)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
476 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4426-2700-0 (9781442627000)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Teresa Heffernan is a professor in the Department of English at St. Mary's University.