The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New EpilogueFrank Kermode is one of our most distinguished critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literature with "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas. |
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The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction : with a New Epilogue Frank Kermode No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
aevum angels apoca apocalypse Augustine beginning Burney called century certainly Christian Christopher Burney chronos complementarity concord console continuity crisis critical D. H. Lawrence death disconfirmation E. H. Gombrich eidetic eidetic images epoch Erich Auerbach eschatological eternity experience feel fictive fin de siècle future hero human humanly images imagination interest invent Joachite kairos kind King Lear La Nausée language Lear less literary fictions literature live London lypse Macbeth matter means middest millennium mind modern mutability myth naïve narrative Nausée nouveau roman novel novelist one's Ortega paradigmatic paradigms past pattern perhaps peripeteia perpetual philosophical plot poem poet poetry poverty prediction present prophecy radical reality relation relevant renovation Robbe-Grillet Roquentin Sartre Sartre's scepticism seems sense simply spatial speak Stevens story structure succession talk temporal things thought tick tick-tock tion tock tradition tragedy transition true word Yeats
Popular passages
Page 7 - into the middest', in medias res, when they are born; they also die in mediis rebus, and to make sense of their span they need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives and to poems.