Eng 385

Topics in Apocalyptic Writing

M. McInerney

Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
	-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

The last book of the Bible, sometimes called Apocalypse, sometimes Revelation, was written at the end of the first century AD, in the apparent belief that the end of the world was imminent. The world has not ended (yet) but the themes of John's book continue to fascinate. Should it be read literally or metaphorically? Is it prediction or allegory? What is the connection between revelation and the end of the world? Between mythology and eschatology, vision and violence, prophecy and poetry, memory and millenialism? This course will center on readings of John, Langland, Dante and Blake, but will require the reading of images as well as texts. This may include (but will not be limited to) medieval manuscript illuminations in illustration of the Apocalypse of John, medieval and early modern allegorical paintings, and Blake's Illuminations. We will also make excursions into the works of other prophets and poets, theorizers of the prophetic, the poetic and the allegorical, and into the worlds of some people who may be both, either or neither and who believe that although the world did not end in the year 2000, we are living in the end times nonetheless.

Texts

• John, The Book of Revelation
• Dante Alighieri, Inferno and Purgatory
• Langland, Piers Plowman , trans. Economou
• Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; America A Prophecy;
• Europe A Prophecy, Milton
• Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Requirements

• Class discussion: each student will take responsibility once during the semester for leading discussion on a particular text or image(which the rest of the class will have read or seen). When you are the leader, you will need to establish the necessary background or context for "your" text, to develop provocative questions, and to be prepared to draw some sort of tentative conclusion. Students interested in presenting some aspect of modern apocalyptic fervor ("rapture", Waco, the Left Behind series, etc.) for one of these assignments should see me asap. You should write up a brief summary (1-2 page) of your own thinking on the subject under discussion and give this to me at the end of the class, but please don't feel that you have to read a prepared piece. Generating good questions out of the thinking you have been doing is infinitely preferable!
• WWW assignment.
• 2 brief (2-3 pg.) close readings, one of a text and one of an image. Check out an example of a close reading of an image by Salvador Dali.
• 1 longer research paper (15pp), due at the end of the semester. While this paper may consider a modern text or phenomenon, it must be solidly grounded in the apocalyptic tradition as explored during the class.
• Epiphanies, visions, and sudden revelations are encouraged but not absolutely required.

Course Webforum Syllabus Texts and Images Apocalyptic Links

 

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Maud McInerney, September 1, 2002. Haverford College Department of English.