ENG 515 - Apocalypse in the Western Literary Imagination

Credits: 3
Note MLA: Cultural Heritage or Contemporary Society / Literacy and Language
The idea that the world will end–as well as how and why it will end–has fascinated people for centuries. In this course, we will be asking why people throughout recorded history have organized history teleologically, as heading towards and culminating in an inevitable apocalypse. We will investigate the role that Apocalyptic thinking has played in the Western literary imagination and cultural psyche from the first century A.D. to the present day by analyzing literature, film and web sites. Ultimately, we will engage in both textual and cultural analysis, posing arguments about the “cultural work” that apocalyptic texts do at different historical moments, including our own.