Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

former author also recognizes the problems of fiction's potential for humanism. When wedded to the affirmative interests of humanism, apocalyptic fiction can serve as effective alerting-cautionary medium as it lays the secular menace of nuclear destruction, the impersonal entropic chaos, or ecological disaster before us. Just as St. John of Patmos catalogues the disasters of the present age to suggest the inevitability of divine intervention in history, or like the prologue of Piers Plowman, which presents an apocalyptic setting of social decay that requires rebirth, the apparent pessimism about America's destiny in recent fiction may be indicative, in accordance with the logic of traditional apocalyptic heritage, of a veiled exhortation to possible renewal. Or, as R. W. B. Lewis summed it up three decades ago: "These apocalyptic visions indeed are offered as weapons for averting the catastrophe" (235). WORKS CITED Bartel, Roland et al., eds. Biblical Images in Literature. Nashville: Abingdon P, 1975. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: The U of Wisconsin P, 1978. Bergoffen, Debra. "The Apocalyptic Meaning of History." The Apocalyptic Vision in America: Interdisciplinary Essays on Myth and Culture. Ed. Lois Perkinson Zamora. Bowling Green: Bowling Green U Popular P, 1982. 24—39. Clebsch, William A. "America's 'Mythique' as Redeemer Nation." Prospects A (1979) : 79—94. Dewey, Joseph. In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age. West Lafayette: Ind.: Purdue UP, 1990. Dowling, David. Fictions of Nuclear Disaster. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1987. 136