The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel - Critical Temporalities and the End Times

List of contents

INTRODUCTION
Apocalypse Now: Critical Temporalities
CHAPTER ONE: Biblical Parodies
CHAPTER TWO: Apocalypse America
CHAPTER THREE: The New Worlds of the Anthropocene
CHAPTER FOUR: After the Neoliberal Future
CONCLUSION
The Post-Apocalyptic Archive
BIBLIOGRAPHY

About the author

Diletta De Cristofaro is Assistant Professor in English Literature at Northumbria University, UK.

Summary

Traditional apocalyptic texts concern the advent of a better world at the end of history that will make sense of everything that happened before. But what is at stake in the contemporary shift to apocalyptic narratives in which the utopian end of time is removed?

The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel offers an innovative critical model for our cultural obsession with ‘the end’ by focussing on the significance of time in the 21st-century post-apocalyptic novel and challenging traditional apocalyptic logic. Once confined to the genre of science fiction, the increasing popularity of end-of-the-world narratives has caused apocalyptic writing to feature in the work of some of contemporary literature’s most well-known fiction writers. Considering novels by Will Self, Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, Jeanette Winterson and others, Diletta De Cristofaro frames the contemporary apocalyptic imagination as a critique of modernity’s apocalyptic conception of time and history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book historicises apocalyptic beliefs by exploring how relentlessly they have shaped the modern world.

Product details

• Authors: Diletta De Cristofaro
• Assisted by: Bryan Cheyette (Editor), Martin Paul Eve (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 17.06.2021
• EAN: 9781350235939
• ISBN: 978-1-350-23593-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: New Horizons in Contemporary W; New Horizons in Contemporary Writing
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Science Fiction & Fantasy, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000