Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction

by Lois Parkinson Zamora

• ISBN13: 9780521362238
• ISBN10: 0521362237
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1989-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a comparative literary study of apocalyptic themes and narrative techniques in the contemporary North and Latin American novel. Zamora explores the history of the myth of apocalypse, from the Bible to medieval and later interpretations, and relates this to the development of American apocalyptic attitudes. She demonstrates that the symbolic tensions inherent in the apocalytic myth have special meaning for postmodern writers. Zamora focuses her examination on the relationship between the temporal ends and the narrative endings in the works of six major novelists: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortazar, John Barth, Walker Percy, and Carlos Fuentes. Distinguished by its unique, cross-cultural perspective, this book addresses the question of the apocalypse as a matter of intellectual and literary history. Zamora's analysis will enlighten both scholars of North and Latin American literature and readers of contemporary fiction.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: the apocolyptic vision and fictions of historic desire

2. Apocalypse and human time in the fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

3. Apocolypse and entropy: physics and the fiction of Thomas Pynchon

4. Art and revolution in the fiction of Julio Cortazar

5. The Apocalypse of Style: John Barth's Self-Consuming Fiction

6. Apocolypse and renewal: Walker Percy and the US South

7. Beyond apocalypse: Carlos Fuente's Terra Nostra

8. Individual and communal conclusions

Notes

Index.