reading log: apocalyptic patterns in twentieth-century fiction

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 ## 2026-04-24
 
+### @{apocalyptic-patterns}
+
+Early Christians balanced a lot of apocalyptic tensions, including now vs not
+yet. Origen, and then Augustine (City of God), wrote against literal
+interpretations of Revelation, and Augustine set the tone for Bede, Anselm,
+Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Joachim of
+Fiore popularised a literal interpretation in the thirteenth century, and though
+he was condemned by the authorities, he had a big influence on later Hussites,
+Lutherans, and Anabaptists, who identified the Antichrist with the Pope (and
+various other people). In the Enlightenment, there was a swing from new world by
+revelation to new world by revolution: 1789, 1848, Communist Manifesto. Secular
+millenialism? Shelley's _The Last Man_ started a 19th-century trend for
+end-of-humanity novels, HG Wells can be read in that tradition. Since Barth,
+theology has re-focused on eschatology, but de-emphasised the literal facts of
+the end-times, though such speculation is alive in well in popular preaching and
+fiction.
+
+Devonport has four models of apocalyptic imagination, ways of relating ultimate
+reality (UR) and primordial time (PR) to profane time (T). One is the UR=PR
+transcends and is kneaded into T. One is that T is cyclically spinning off into
+UR, each time is an opportunity to jump off the train. Another is that T is an
+irreversible march from PR to UR, which both transcend T and are placed as
+historical endpoints within it, thus giving T meaning and structure. Another is
+the same as the third but UR is seen as a return to PR, rather than going beyond
+it.
+
+Much of this book seemed concerned with metaphysical speculation, which is fine,
+but a step removed from my concern with rhetorical strategy. I'd have to spend
+at least half a day getting more value out of this book, probably a whole day.
+If I did, I'd want to ask, how do the metaphysical speculations implied by the
+20th-century novels studied in this book give the audience hope in the face of
+adversity? But I think the question is a bit sideways to what this book is
+trying to do, perhaps what novels in general are trying to do.
+
+I was struck though by Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, _The Road_, in which a
+father and son struggle to survive in a post-nuclear desert, searching for other
+good people and signs of life in an environment of death. That struck me as
+related to my concerns with apocalyptic, as struggling on with the right values
+even in an environment hostile to the good.
+
+He had an idea about the hereafter as something present now beneath the surface,
+ready to burst forth. I think this is a great idea, perhaps more obvious in
+Pauline apocalypse than Revelation. However, could we say that the effect of
+mythic language as described by @{thompson-revelation}, to nest the present
+context in a larger context, does this? Is the New Jerusalem a reality
+underlying the present one, now, waiting to burst forth?
+
 ### @{no-one-is-too-small}
 
 Major themes: