Defense Date
7-11-2010
Graduation Date
Summer 2010
Availability
Immediate Access
Submission Type
thesis
Degree Name
MA
Department
English
School
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
Committee Chair
Bernard Beranek
Committee Member
Anne Brannen
Keywords
apocalypse, inferno, prophecy, revelation, solitude
Abstract
The literary genre apocalypse is unknown or, at best, vague to literary scholarship. The genre apocalypse is an important category of religious and world literature. Apocalypses communicate diverse worldviews. They rationalize existence. They encourage audiences unto righteousness and warn audiences of sin. Their common forms and functions achieve their distinctive, visionary, revelatory quality and exhortative force. These forms and functions constitute the genre apocalypses' definition, and differentiate apocalypses from other works. Dante's Inferno and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude are both apocalypses, though they are not normally considered such. Each work manifests an apocalypse's typical form and function. Each presents a unique vision of reality. Each exhorts consistently with it vision, aims its exhortation at its unique audience and era, and achieves all this through typically apocalyptic motifs like those seen in Revelation. Inferno and Solitude's apocalypticism reveals their meaning and explains their cultural effect.
Format
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Assenza, D. (2010). Valleys of the Shadow of Death: The Apocalypses of the Inferno and One Hundred Years of Solitude (Master's thesis, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/264