Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination - Tapa dura

Apocalyptic Transformations: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination is a fine example of why literature and literary criticism matter in today's world. Elizabeth Rosen demonstrates the continuing relevance in postmodern fiction, film, and graphic texts of that grandest of all grand narratives, Apocalypse. In lucid and engaging prose, Rosen details how contemporary writers and filmmakers have modified the story of Apocalypse in the aftermath of the death of God. Examining the work of some of the most respected American authors of the second half of the twentieth century as well as popular forms such as the Matrix films and comic books, Rosen illuminates the persistence of Apocalypse in the contemporary imagination. In their efforts to rescript the end of the world and what might follow it, she convincingly argues, contemporary apocalyptists offer hope, a way of seeing beyond the end, and a way out of the world view in which devastation by nuclear war or some other disaster is unavoidable. Apocalyptic Transformations is important in showing that postmodern narratives offer an alternative path to that mapped by the fatalistic, self-fulfilling prophecy of traditional Apocalypse. -- Karen Alexander * Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society * Elizabeth K. Rosen understands more of my work than I do. -- Terry Gilliam Rosen offers an impressive review of previous criticism on selected works without resorting to specialized jargon, thus producing a book that is refreshingly readable. Her approach is unique . . . . Helpful endnotes accompany each chapter . . . . Recommended. * CHOICE, August 2008 * One of the most enjoyable books I have read in awhile. I appreciated the diversity of cultural sources that Rosen drew upon in consideration of apocalypse, including graphic novels, books, and film. A solid consideration of how differing visions of the New Jerusalem speak to the late modern imagination. -- John W. Morehead * Morehead's Musings * We cannot fully appreciate contemporary art without acknowledging its apocalyptic dimension. Elizabeth K. Rosen's interpretation of major works of postmodern literature and film is an important guide to the unchartered territory where fear and hope, eternity and immediacy, the finite and the infinite all come together in the unfulfillable desire to comprehend the end before it comes. -- Zbigniew Lewicki, University of Warsaw

Apocalyptic Transformation explores how one the oldest sense-making paradigms, the apocalyptic myth, is altered when postmodern authors and filmmakers adopt it. It examines how postmodern writers adapt a fundamentally religious story for a secular audience and it proposes that even as these writers use the myth in traditional ways, they simultaneously undermine and criticize the grand narrative of apocalypse itself.