|
|
Article: The Modern English Visionary: Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve.
- Article from:
- Twentieth Century Literature
- Article date:
- December 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Hofstra University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The popularity of Peter Ackroyd and Angela Carter, and the (sometimes puzzled) critical acclaim accorded their work, attest to the ways in which the protean novel form has absorbed visionary and apocalyptic impulses. It has been shown that alongside the nineteenth-century literature of realism there is a persistent current of visionary writing--that is, writing that explodes the stabilities of world and person, time and space, consciousness and sexual identity, and with them religious and ideological certainties concerning society and history. The events of the twentieth century have led philosophers and critics to perceive apocalyptic writing as a central genre, and the ...