The End is nigh! It seems as if the “End” has been “nigh” for centuries, even millennia. This course considers the apocalyptic tradition of the 19th-21st centuries, and seeks to understand the revolutionary power of End Time accounts. What is an “apocalypse” in religious, literary and cultural terms? How does it relate to radicalism and/or conservatism? Is human thought somehow inescapably “apocalyptic”?
What relation (if any) do late modern apocalypse accounts have with the sacred writings of the ancient Hebrew and Christian bibles? We begin with the Book of Revelation and then turn to 19th-21st century apocalypse and post-apocalyptic art, considering the interplay between politics, gender, power, ideology, theology and entertainment in these challenging, amusing and strangely encouraging accounts of The End of Time. We look at Hegel, Marx, Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Huxley, Eliot, McCarthy, Miyazaki and artistic representations of the Apocalypse all the while keeping a watchful eye on the horizon…
