http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1040994

Hell in contemporary literature : Western descent narratives since 1945

This book explores the idea that modern, Western secular cultures have retained a belief in the concept of Hell as an event or experience of endless or unjust suffering. In contemporary society, the descent to Hell has come to represent the means of recovering -or discovering -selfhood. Hell in Contemporary Literature discusses descent journeys in Holocaust testimony and fiction, memoirs of mental illness, and feminist, postmodern, and post-colonial narratives written after 1945. A wide range of texts is discussed, including writing by Primo Levi, W.G. Sebald, Anne Michaels, Alasdair Gray, and Salman Rushdie, and films such as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and the Matrix trilogy. Drawing on theoretical writings by Bakhtin, Levinas, Derrida, Judith Butler, David Harvey, and Paul Ricoeur, the book addresses broader issues such as narration and identity, the ethics of the subject, and trauma and memory.

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