| Description |
1 online resource (viii, 212 pages) |
| Contents |
Machine generated contents note: 1. Immortality in Science and Literature: Dreams and Nightmares -- Desire for Unending Life in "This World" -- Second Thoughts on Living Forever -- Chance of Literature: Forays into No-Man's-Land -- Preludes: Immortality in Myth and Folklore -- Risk of Literature: Limits of Creative Imagination -- Preview: A Literary Theme from Swift to Houellebecq -- 2. Literary Thought Experiments: Life Everlasting, from Blessing to Curse -- Overview: The Many Faces of Immortality -- "Joys All Want Eternity" -- Euphoria of Eternal Youth: J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan -- Eternity of the All-Too-Human: Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics -- Utopian Vision: G.B. Shaw, Back to Methuselah -- Living Dead: Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel -- Immortals and Their Antagonists -- God-Given Finitude: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels -- Immortal Ape: Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan -- Immortality, Totalitarian-Style: Walter Besant, The Inner House -- Without Death, No Life: Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars -- Scandal of Eternal Beauty: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray -- From God to Caveman: Jorge Luis Borges, "The Immortal" -- Immortality and Its Discontents -- Alchemy and Gothic Horror: William Godwin and Some English Romantics -- Boredom of the Cold Heart: Karel Capek, The Makropulos Secret -- Wandering Portuguese: J.M. Machado de Assis, "The Immortal" -- View from Sirius: Simone de Beauvoir, All Men Are Mortal -- Surviving the End of the World: Martin Amis, "The Immortals" -- Lady in the Machine: Dino Buzzati, Larger than Life -- Trouble in Paradise: Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island -- World without Death: Disasters and Happy Endings -- Village in Turmoil: Iris Barry, The Last Enemy -- Country on the Brink of Ruin: Jose Saramago, Death at Intervals -- 3. Blessings of Mortality: Limited Time, Limitless Possibilities? -- Retrospect -- Renunciation and New Horizons -- Eternity Nevermore: Salman Rushdie, Grimus -- Living on in Memory: Gabi Gleichmann, The Elixir of Immortality -- "Limited Time as a Source of Strength"?: Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon |
| Summary |
The idea of earthly immortality has a tradition in literature dating to the Gilgamesh epic. But what would it mean to attain such immortality? Answers are suggested in novels and plays that explore the theme using varieties of Borges's "rational imagination," often in connection with projections of biology or cybernetics. In this groundbreaking study, Karl S. Guthke examines key works in this vein, throwing into relief fascinating instances of human self-awareness across the last 300 years. Authors discussed in detail include J.M. Barrie, Calvino, Shaw, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Swift, Aldous Huxley, Walter Besant, Arthur C. Clarke, Wilde, Borges, William Godwin and other English Romantics, Capek, Machado de Assis, de Beauvoir, Martin Amis, Dino Buzzati, Houellebecq, Iris Barry, Saramago, Rushdie, Gabi Gleichmann, and Pascal Mercier. Guthke finds that the fictional triumph over death is only rarely viewed positively, and mostly as a "curse"--For a variety of reasons. Almost always, however, literary experiments with immortality suggest an alternative: the chance to take our limited lifetime into our own hands, shaping it meaningfully and thereby experiencing "a new way of being in the world" (Mercier). The fictional immortals reject this challenge, thus depriving themselves of what makes humans human and life worth living. And what that might be is also at least hinted at in the works Guthke analyzes. As a result, an aspect of cultural history comes into view that is revealing and stimulating at a time that is, as Der Spiegel put it in 2014, "obsessed by the invention of immortality." Karl S. Guthke is the Kuno Francke Professor of Germanic Art and Culture, Emeritus, of Harvard University |
| Notes |
Originally published in German in 2015 under the title: Lebenszeit ohne Ende : Kulturgeschichte eines Gedankenexperiments in der Literatur |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Immortality in literature.
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
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Immortality in literature
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781787441033 |
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1787441032 |
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