| Description |
1 online resource (x, 262 pages) |
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text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-252) and index. |
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Filmography: pages 239-240. |
| Contents |
Introduction Descent and Return: the katabatic imagination; Chapter 1 -- Hell in Our Time; (i) Is Hell a fable?; (ii) Hell as the modern condition; (iii) Descent and dissent in modern philosophy; Chapter 2 -- Chronotopes of Hell; (i) Generic features of katabatic narrative; (ii) Bakhtin's Inferno: visionary versus historical chronotopes; (iii) Unspeakable wisdom; (iv) Conversion versus inversion; (v) Infernal inversion: Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano; (vi) The absolute and 'my absolute': Sarah Kofman's Smothered Words; Chapter 3 -- Auschwitz as Hell; (i) Pathways through a life: The Search for Roots; (ii) Black Holes and the biblical Job; (iii) A constellation of chronotopes: If This is a Man; (a) Threshold crossing into Hell; (b) Auschwitz as education; (c) The visionary world; (d) On trial in Hell; (e) Sea-voyage and shipwreck; (iv) The intersection of pathways; Chapter 4 -- Surviving with Ghosts: Second Generation Holocaust Narratives; (i) Bog-boys and fire-children; (ii) Vertigo |
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Sebald's Austerlitz; (iii) From depth to ascent: Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces; Chapter 5 -- Katabatic Memoirs of Mental Illness; (i) Down the rabbit hole; (ii) Parallel worlds and protest culture: Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted; (iii) The schizophrenic HyperReal: Carol North's Welcome, |
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Silence, /i>; (iv) Falling into grace: Lauren Slater's Spasm: A Memoir with Lies; Chapter 6 -- Engendering Dissent in the Underworld; (i) Gender dynamics in the descent to Hell; (ii) Inside the hero's descent: Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills; (iii) Hell and utopia: Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time; (iv) Dante upside-down: Alice Notley's The Descent of Alette; Chapter 7 -- Postmodern Hell and the Search for Roots; (i) Karl Marx's katabasis; (ii) Postmodern capitalist Hell: Alasdair Gray's Lanark; (iii) Lanark's search for roots; (iv) Can realism lead fantasy out of Hell? Can fantasy help realism?; Chapter 8 -- East-West Descent Narratives; (i) Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Western descents to the East; (ii) Salman Rushdie's disoriented subjects; (iii) The migrations of Orpheus, |
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In five acts: Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet; (a) Threshold crossing; (b) Ground Zero; (c) Looking back; (d) Dismemberment; (e) Return of another; Epilogue -- Katabasis in the Twenty-First Century; (i) September 11th: the first circle; (ii) Afghanistan and Iraq: there and back again (again); (iii) Global fear and its inversions; Appendix: Primo Levi, 'Map of reading'; Bibliography; Index. |
| Summary |
This book explores the idea that modern Western secular cultures have retained a belief in the concept of Hell as an event or experience of endless or unjust suffering. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Hell in literature.
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Hell in literature. |
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Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Literature, Modern. |
| Chronological Term |
20th century |
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1900-1999 |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Other Form: |
Print version Falconer, Rachel. Hell in contemporary literature : Western descent narratives since 1945 Edinburgh, Scotland : Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 9780748617630 (OCoLC) 56651849 |
| ISBN |
9780748634446 (online) |
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0748634444 |
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9780748617630 (hardback) |
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0748617639 |
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9781474468138 (electronic book) |
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1474468136 (electronic book) |
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