From Tragedy to Apocalypse in American Literature

This book argues that imaginative literature is essential to comprehending contemporary threats to human life. Readings of postwar American works by Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy, and Norman Maclean show how their literary forms educate us to the reality of a new ground of sensemaking—the apocalyptic sublime. From Tragedy to Apocalypse in American Literature: Reading to Make Sense of Our Endings argues that imaginative literature is essential to comprehending contemporary threats to the survival of the human species and the preservation of our humanity. Atnip outlines a theory of reading which directs us to realities and imperatives that are ignored, denied, or distorted by dominant social conventions and habits of cognition. She then puts this theory into practice through readings of postwar American works by Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy, and Norman Maclean. This book argues that these texts collectively educate us to a new ground of sense—the apocalyptic sublime—and the need for an unending effort to comprehend what it means to live a human life against this inhuman background.