Mebius, Eva-Charlotta; (2020) Living in antediluvian times: Apocalyptic floodscapes in literature and art 1830-1895. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Dissertation of Eva-Charlotta Mebius 2020 Minor Corrections 6 July (FINAL).pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 January 2025. Download (2MB)

Abstract

This thesis explores the representation of apocalypse in literature and art of the 19th century, with a particular focus on the representation of London as an antediluvian floodscape that anticipated narrative trends in the 21st century. In so doing, the thesis charts the development of apocalyptic writing in the 19th from the first English translation of the apocryphal The Book of Enoch (1821), to the antediluvian epics of the Hyper-Miltonics, to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). The first chapter introduces the English translation of The Book of Enoch, its reception, and its importance as a source for representations of the antediluvian world. The second chapter presents the now mostly forgotten best-sellers of the middle decades of the 19th century, the antediluvian epics of the Hyper-Miltonics. The chapter outlines how they used the myth of the Antediluvians and the destruction of their hyper-industrialised, urbanised, consumerist, and carnivorous civilisation to construct an apocalyptic form of criticism of the British Empire that foreshadowed the apocalyptic romances of the fin de siècle. The chapter uses John Abraham Heraud’s Hyper-Miltonic epic The Judgement of the Flood (1834) and his critique of antediluvian industrialisation as a case study. The third chapter considers how the sense of living before the Flood was reflected in the art and poetry of John Martin, and the British-born American painter Thomas Cole. The fourth chapter identifies the importance of the antediluvian imagination in the work of Charles Dickens, and in his apocalyptic visions of London especially. The chapter highlights Dickens’s personal and professional relationship to the Hyper-Miltonics, and re-examines the implications of the antediluvian historical and cultural context of his novels. Finally, the Coda briefly reflects on the continuity between H. G. Wells’s apocalyptic romances with the earlier phantasmagorical antediluvian floodscapes of the Hyper-Miltonics and Charles Dickens.

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