Epics of Disaffection

1. Introduction: Epics of Disaffection, Prophets of Alienation (1)

The epic vision (7)

Teleology and Contingency (14)

2. The Lord of the Rings: A Journey in Space

and Time (18)

Tolkien's legendarium (22)

A journey in time (31)

War and the shaping of Middle-earth (36)

"Death and immortality" (44)

3. Tolkien: History, Myth, Prophecy (54)

Tolkien's anti-modernism (55)

"Out of due time": Tolkien and William Morris (61)

History, myth and allegory (67)

Intuition and inspiration (73)

Fantasy and prophecy (79)

Tolkien's romance (85)

Tolkien's "novel" (91)

A frameless picture, a tuneless song (98)

4. War and Peace: Tolstoy's "Novel" (103)

Politics and romance (108)

Realism and romance: Tolstoy's characters (115)

Realism and romance: Tolstoy's subversion of sentimentality (119)

Sentiment and satire (126)

Tolstoy the trickster (132)

Epic scale (138)

5. "Not a Novel": Time and Space in Tolstoy's Epic (143)

Epic time (145)

Space, romance and politics: Tolstoy's epic zone (150)

Two quests, three heroes (159)

Fairyland (163)

Tolstoy the conjuror: realism and the numinous (171)

Tolstoy's epic (182)

6. An Unfinished Epic? The Making of the English Working Class (190)

A libertarian communist (193)

Thompson's history: the epic framework (202)

Paradise Lost: Thompson's Golden Age (207)

Epic scale (212)

Thompson's argument against the historians (217)

"Secret History" (223)

Epic transformation (229)

Heroes without gods (231)

7. The End of History: The Sykaos Papers (242)

Lear on the heath (245)

Swiftian satire (255)

Satirical novel (264)

Idyll, epic, apocalypse (271)

The end of human history (281)

8. Conclusion: Prophecy, Myth and the Numinous (285)

Prophecy (285)

Locating the numinous in space and time (292)

Positioning the narrative (295)

Prophecy and history (301)