Knowledge and mortality
Subtitle: anagnorisis in Genesis and narrative fiction
By: Sherryll S. Mleynek.
Series: American university studies. Series III, Comparative literature ;; 56; American university studies.; v. 56.
Publisher: P. Lang; Lang AG International Academic Publishers, Peter
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 140
Subjects: Fiction -- History and criticism.; Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.; Recognition in literature.; Mortality in literature.
Description: "Aristotle identifies "the transformation from ignorance to knowledge," or anagnorisis, as crucial to dramatic tension. Using the Biblical "garden" as the locus classicus of anagnorisis in Western narrative fiction, this study establishes the connection between knowledge and mortality in Genesis, and analyzes anagnorisis and mortality in three nineteenth-century British novels, Middlemarch, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Pride and Prejudice, and in the "post-modern" novel Possession.

Ultimately, it is a proof that the suffusing literary motif of "knowledge and mortality" is inescapable: it transcends fictional genre and period because the "knowledge of mortality" is humanity's most ontologically disturbing burden."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references  (p. [129]-133) and index.