The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished critics of English literature. Here is his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos & crisis. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity & how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. He then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser & Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning & end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literature with "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot & Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," & such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre & Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern & earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, he is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty & prodigal of ideas.