Narratives of Hope and Despair: Ruin and Regeneration in Literature and Culture (1) (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

By: Melanie Duckworth and Johanna M. Wagner and Deanna Benjamin

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Synopsis: In narratives of literature and cultural production, hope and despair remain fundamental in exploring our world. In recent years, political polarization, the Covid pandemic, global warming, and new and ongoing wars have contributed to global crises, to which despair is an understandable response. Yet hope is continually sought and proclaimed. By examining tropes of ruin and regeneration in a wide selection of narratives including memoir, graphic narratives, fiction, film, art, radio plays, culture, rhetoric, and discourse, the book uncovers resonances between them. The anthology moves from the personal to the collective, addressing individual matters of the body and the mind, societal visions of utopia and dystopia, and, finally, hope and despair for the earth itself in representations of apocalypse and the Anthropocene. This structure, alongside the interdisciplinary nature of the project, maps dynamic international perspectives in which hope and despair flow across and through personal, social, and earthly concerns.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 238 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9781040442418
Related ISBNs:: 9781041107583, 9781040442388, 9781003656692
Publisher:: Taylor & Francis
Date of Addition:: 10/14/25
Copyrighted By:: selection and editorial matter, Johanna M. Wagner, Melanie Duckworth, and Deanna Benjamin
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Psychology, Language Arts
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.
Edited by:: Johanna M. Wagner
Edited by:: Melanie Duckworth
Edited by:: Deanna Benjamin