Unbuilding Jerusalem

As a result of the volatile tradition of popular millenarianism, the term apocalyptic has often been taken to imply a radical struggle for justice. Beginning with the biblical origins of the genre, however, the alignment of apocalypse with an idea of aesthetic form has often served the opposite purpose-to suppress the radical prophetic tradition and to stabilize a society built in many respects on injustice. In this challenging and ambitious book, Steven Goldsmith provides new readings of texts spanning the tradition from biblical prophecy to postmodernism as he investigates the conservative purposes that have been served by claims that an apocalyptic aesthetic transcends politics as well as history.Goldsmith begins with a provocative account of the uses of apocalypse in modern literary theory and criticism. Then, after a discussion of the origins and the reception of the Book of Revelation, he considers the transfiguration of apocalyptic literature in the works of English romantic writer s such as William Blake, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and even Thomas Paine.Unbuilding Jerusalem will be compelling reading for literary theorists and critics interested in romanticism and the Bible as literature, feminist theorists, and others concerned with the intersections of politics, art, and religion.