Introduction. Chronicles of the End of the World: The End is not the End

Arnaud Schmitt (1)

1 CR2P - Centre de recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements

It seems that after all, the end is not the End. This seeming paradox is perfectly encapsulated by the word “chronicle”; contrary to an overpowering narrative, such as the one of a whole world about to die, causing the demise of millions of people, a chronicle is a factual record of daily events. As opposed to canonical and macro-narratives of major apocalypses,1 chronicles of the end of the world offer micro-narratives of daily lives, of their mundanity and physicality; they depict the way these lives are impacted but not necessarily upended by the, or more precisely by an, apocalypse that eventually turns out not to be irremediably apocalyptic. Indeed, some of the apocalypses mentioned in the works studied in the essays that follow are not imperiously final: they certainly don’t bode well for the future, but they don’t put an end to the world as we know it; they simply radically (or not) alter its physical, environmental or political order. In other words, they should be seen more as states than as outcomes, more as stases than as eschatological fireworks, and the characters described in these chronicles are shown adapting to these states, not being engulfed by them. They justify the distinction between major and minor eschatology, because, with the latter, changes might be major but the effects they entail and the adaptation techniques required are not totally remote from what we do in our current, pre-crisis lives.

Domaines: Littératures

Arnaud Schmitt. Introduction. Chronicles of the End of the World: The End is not the End. Transatlantica. Revue d'études américaines/American Studies Journal, 2016, 2, ⟨10.4000/transatlantica.8349⟩. ⟨hal-02524953⟩