Product Description

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved 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 Burroughs, 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114239 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

Necessary Reading
I discovered Kermode thanks to this book more than 10 years ago, and after reading this essay I bought almost everything he wrote, and I can tell you I was never disappointed. Kermode is both deep and simple, sensible and surprising. He is one of those supremely gifted literary critics who teach you to read, at any age. He can show you both the simplicity of complexity and the complexity of simplicity. Everybody knows that stories have a beginning, and end, and something in between: Kermode makes you understand what it really means, and what are the consequences of this only apparently trivial fact. I do recommend this book especially to young students of literature, to those who wish to become critics: this is one of the models that one should imitate, a critic that teaches you criticism simply taking you with him in his interpretive journeys. With such a Vergil, you may feel you're Dante.

Frank Kermode Rocks
It is worth reading anything that Frank Kermode cares to write. His recent book on Shakespeare is one of the few truly indispensable works in that very over-crowded sector, and this book is every bit as lucid, intelligent, revelatory and impressive as "Shakespeare's Language" is. Frank Kermode ROCKS! A "must have".