Visions of Apocalypse : Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture PDF
Preview Visions of Apocalypse : Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture
Modern French Identities Modern French Identities Picturing the end of the world is one of the most enduring of cultural A Leona Archer and Alex Stuart (eds) r practices. The ways in which people of different historical periods c h conceive of this endpoint reveals a great deal about their imagination e r and philosophical horizons. This groundbreaking collection of essays a n Visions of offers an overview of the Apocalyptic imagination as it presents itself d in French literature and culture from the thirteenth century to the S t present day. The contributors analyse material as diverse as medieval u Apocalypse a French biblical commentaries and twenty-first-century science fiction, r t taking in established canonical authors alongside contemporary fig- ( e ures and less well-known writers. The book also considers a vast d s range of other subject matter, including horror films, absurdist drama, ) Representations of the End • critical theory, medieval manuscript illuminations and seventeenth- V in French Literature and Culture century theology. Moving from the sacred to the profane, the sublime is i to the obscene, the divine to the post-human, the volume opens up o n more than 750 years of French Apocalypticism to critical scrutiny. s o f A p o c a l y p s e Leona Archer completed her PhD on medieval French literature at g King’s College, Cambridge. n a L Alex Stuart holds a PhD in medieval French literature from King’s College, Cambridge. r e t e P ISBN 978-3-0343-0921-9 www.peterlang.com Modern French Identities Modern French Identities Picturing the end of the world is one of the most enduring of cultural A Leona Archer and Alex Stuart (eds) r practices. The ways in which people of different historical periods c h conceive of this endpoint reveals a great deal about their imagination e r and philosophical horizons. This groundbreaking collection of essays a n Visions of offers an overview of the Apocalyptic imagination as it presents itself d in French literature and culture from the thirteenth century to the S t present day. The contributors analyse material as diverse as medieval u Apocalypse a French biblical commentaries and twenty-first-century science fiction, r t taking in established canonical authors alongside contemporary fig- ( e ures and less well-known writers. The book also considers a vast d s range of other subject matter, including horror films, absurdist drama, ) Representations of the End • critical theory, medieval manuscript illuminations and seventeenth- V in French Literature and Culture century theology. Moving from the sacred to the profane, the sublime is i to the obscene, the divine to the post-human, the volume opens up o n more than 750 years of French Apocalypticism to critical scrutiny. s o f A p o c a l y p s e Leona Archer completed her PhD on medieval French literature at g King’s College, Cambridge. n a L Alex Stuart holds a PhD in medieval French literature from King’s College, Cambridge. r e t e P www.peterlang.com Visions of Apocalypse Modern French Identities Edited by Peter Collier Volume 111 PETER LANG Oxford l Bern l Berlin l Bruxelles l Frankfurt am Main l New York l Wien Leona Archer and Alex Stuart (eds) Visions of Apocalypse Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture PETER LANG Oxford l Bern l Berlin l Bruxelles l Frankfurt am Main l New York l Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945474 ISSN 1422-9005 ISBN 978-3-0343-0921-9 (print) ISBN 978-3-0353-0370-4 (eBook) © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2013 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. Printed in Germany Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Illustrations xi Leona Archer and Alex Stuart, with Daron Burrows Introduction 1 Part 1 Pre-1800 13 Daron Burrows ‘Vers la fin croistra la religion’: The End of the World According to the Medieval French Prose Apocalypse 15 Nigel Morgan Three French Fourteenth-Century Apocalypses as Reinterpretations of English Thirteenth-Century Predecessors 43 Adeline Lionetto-Hesters Ronsard’s Bergerie: From Pastoral Dream to Apocalyptic Reverie 69 Kathryn Banks Apocalypse and Literature in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Rabelais and the Frozen Words 83 vi Nathan Parker Proselytism and Apocalypticism in England Before and After the Act of Toleration of 1689: The French Threat and a Lone Puritan 99 Part 2 1800–1945 111 Michel Arouimi Rimbaud’s Apocalypse: Founding Principles and Literary Repercussions (Bosco, Ramuz) 113 Marie Vélikanov Eschatology in the Poetry of Charles Péguy 127 Maria Manuel Lisboa This World is Not the Case: Apocalypse in J.H. Rosny Ainé 139 Jennifer Rushworth ‘Alors la résurrection aura pris fin’: Visions of the End in Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu 153 Crispin Lee Georges Bataille or the Theory and Fiction of Apocalyptic Visions 165 Part 3 Post-1945 177 Ana-Maria M’Enesti Dialectics of Apocalyptic Imagery in Eugène Ionesco’s Plays 179 vii Lara Cox Absurd Visions of the Apocalypse: Adamov, Arrabal and Ionesco and a Politics of Spectatorship for the Postmodern Age 191 Susannah Ellis Writing in the Aftermath: The Figure of the Untermensch in Antoine Volodine’s Des Anges mineurs 207 Tony Thorström The Corporeal Apocalypse: Antagonistic Visions of the Human Body in Michel Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d’une île (2005) 219 Angus MacDonald New French Horror and the End of the World As We Know It 233 Notes on Contributors 247 Index 253
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