(Preliminary) Bibliography

You are not supposed to read all, or even most, of these works - the list is more supposed to be a useful and representative cut into the extremely vast body of writings on all points of the apocalyptic. Believe me, it's VAST...as far as these works are available in the Bamberg Opac, I've included the catalog numbers.


Barr, David L. “The Apocalypse of John as Oral Enactment.” Interpretation 40 (1986): 243-256.
[ 15/.ZT 4020-40 ]

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.
[an absolute landmark study on maybe the most influential Puritan genre: the jeremiad. Bercovitch is very outspoken on what he believes is the apocalyptic foundation of all American culture - useful, despite its age!] [ 40/HR 1708 FE 9151]

Brummett, Barry. Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991.
[ 40/ER 990 LE 6949 ]

Caird, George B. A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine. London: A & C Black, 1984. [the whole thing annotated by a non-fundamentalist theologian] [ 15/xtl 57 CA 717-27 ]

Cohn, Norman. Cosmos, Chaos and the World to come. The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. [ 10/irg 93 CR 1478 ]

Engler, Bernd, Joerg O. Fichte, and Oliver Scheiding, eds. Millenial Thought in America. Historical and Intellectual Contexts, 1630-1680. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002.

Freese, Peter. “From the Apocalypse to the Entropic End: From Hope to Despair to New Hope.” Eds. Peter Freese and Charles B. Harris. The Holodeck in the Garden. Science and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction. Normal: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004. 334-356.

Heard, Alex. Apocalypse pretty soon. Travels in End-Time America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Kibbey, Ann. The interpretation of material shapes in Puritanism. A study of rhetoric, prejudice, and violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. [ 40/HS 1721 FP 3104]

Korshin, Paul J. “Queuing and Waiting: the Apocalypse in England, 1660-1750.” Eds. C.A Patrides and Joseph Wittreich. The Apocalypse in English Renaissance thought and literature. Pattern, antecedents and Repercussions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. 240-265. [ 40/HI 1117 FM 2356]

Kreuziger, Frederick A. Apocalypse and Science Fiction. A Dialectic of Religious and Secular Soteriologies. Chico: Scholars Press, 1982.

May, John R. Toward a New Earth: Apocalypse in the American Novel. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972. [ 40/HR 1819 FG 5605]

O'Leary, Stephen. Arguing the Apocalypse. A Theory of Millenial Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Robinson, Douglas. American Apocalypses. The Image of the End of the World in American Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. [ 40/HR 1712 FN 7313]

Seed, David, ed. Imagining Apocalypse. Studies in Cultural Crisis. London, Macmillan Press, 2000.

Söfting, Inger-Anne. "Desert Pandemonium: Cormack McCarthy's Apocalptic 'Western' in Blood Meridian." American Studies in Scandinavia 31.2 (1999): 13-30.

Stein, Stephen J., ed. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. Volume 3. Apocalpyticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age. New York: Continuum, 1998. [ 15/yur 98 CS 1914-3]

Taylor, Justin. A Mountain Walked or Stumbled: Madness, Apocalypse, and H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” <http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft_taylor.pdf>.

Uhlig, Christiane, and Rupert Kalkofen, eds. In Erwartung des Endes. Bern: Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2000. [ 40/EC 5410 LH 8579]

Weber, Eugen. Apocalypses. Prophecies, Cults and Millenial Beliefs through the Ages. London: Hutchinson, 1999. [ 40/HG 432 LH 6436 ]

(Preliminary) Schedule

This schedule is, I might add, an ideal - I don't honestly think we're gonna make it through all these points entirely. We will definitely have to deal with 1) the Puritans 2) Melville 3) the differences between traditional, religious apocalypse and secular apocalypse 4) and some of the modes of secular apocalypse (Jack London - TS Eliot - Paul Auster will have their appearance).

• Session I (April 18) - Introduction to the class, our materials, to apocalypses in general (short), ancient, "traditional" apocalypses in general (short), THE apocalypse, aka The Revelation of St. John (longer, much longer).
  

• April 25 - on this beautiful evening in late April, no class session will make your day: we'll have to cancel it. Why? You are supposed to be in U9/111 at 6 pm to attend the introductory session of the tutorial on "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten". The tutorial will take place NOT ONLY on Wednesday evenings, but on various other scheduled occasions - so you can attend this class and the tutorial.
  

• Session II (May 2) - The apocalyptic inception of American colonization - introduction: the Puritan settlers and the City Upon a Hill - Puritan literary genres and writers - The Apocalypse in Puritan Rhetoric - poetry by Michael Wigglesworth.
  
• Session III (May 9) - Cotton Mather and in particular, his Wonders of the Invisible World (small parts of it, not the whole thing) - the corruption of the apocalytic site - witchcraft and magic -
  
• Session IV (May 16) - Cotton Mather continued - the post-millenial and more optimistic view on apocalypse of Jonathan Edwards - the Great Awakening
• Session V (May 23) - The Confidence Man introduced

• Session VI (May 30) - May 30: I'll hand out the list of topics for our response paper on this day. I'll also post it here. And - The Confidence Man continued a little more.

• Session VII ( June 6) Capitalist Apocalypse: excerpts from Ignatius Donelly's Caesar's Column - the urge to re-colonize the country: Jack London's The Scarlet Plague and George R. Stewart's Earth Abides
  
• Session VIII (June 13) - Jack London continued - & 2) Weird & Gothic Apocalypse: stories by H.P. Lovecraft

• June 13: Last day to submit your response paper.
  

• Session IX (June 20) - Weird Apocalypse continued - HP Lovecraft: The Colour out of Space - Nuclear Apocalypse
• Session X (June 27) - Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things.
• Session XI (July 4) - In the Country of Last Things continued

• By July 4, at latest, you ought to have some idea of what you would like to write your term paper on. You are absolutely free in your choice and I will gladly help you find and refine a topic, within reasonable limits (your paper should naturally take up a topic more or less related to our class discussions) - just talk to me about it, even before July 4, if you like.
  

• Session XII (July 11) - The two Bush administrations and apocalyptic rhetoric - the impending climate change and apocalyptic fears - apocalypse, power, and politics
• Session XIII (July 18) - Apocalypse, Power, and Politics continued - and: last things, as it were. We could read some comic strips on the apocalypse, or we might consider turning the seminar into an apocalyptic cult unit with a vision for the final days to come.
  

• August 15: Last day to submit your term paper.