In contrast to the prevailing scholarly con-sensus that understands sentimentality to be grounded on a logic of love and sympathy, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism demonstrates that in order for sentimentality to work as an antislavery engine, it needed to be linked to its seeming opposite—fear, especially the fear of God’s wrath. Most antislavery reformers recognized that calls for love and sympathy or the representation of suffering slaves would not lead an audience to “feel right” or to actively oppose slavery.
The Great Fire of London: In that Apocalyptic Year, 1666
Untold numbers perished; great buildings and ancient districts disappeared; knowledge acquired and stored over centuries was lost forever. The Great Fire of London accomplished what the Spanish Armada and the plague had failed to do–it reduced the world's most majestic city to utter ruin.
The Great Fire of London recreates this cataclysmic event through precisely etched dramas drawn from firsthand accounts of those who lived through the all-consuming blaze.
Frank 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.
