"Visionary" writers, says Edward Ahearn in this original book, seek
a personal way to explode the normal experience of the "real,"
using prophetic visions, fantastic tales, insane rantings,
surrealistic dreams, and drug- or sex-induced dislocations in their
work. Their fiction expresses rebellion against all the values of
Western civilization-personal, sexual, familial, religious, moral,
societal, and political. Yet even though they are anti-realistic,
they do react to specific aspects of modern reality, such as the
recurring promise and failure of social revolution. Ahearn, who
finds this form at once exhilarating, immensely disturbing, vital,
and subversive, explores the work of a wide variety of authors who
have contributed to the genre from the late eighteenth century to
the present day. Beginning with the appearance of visionary writing
in the work of William Blake, Ahearn traces the development of the
form in texts by widely scattered authors writing in French,
German, and English. He includes Novalis, Lautreamont, Breton,
William Burroughs, and contemporary feminists Monique Wittig and
Jamaica Kincaid, among others. Quoting liberally from these
authors, Ahearn summarizes the works and places them in context.
General readers, as well as those who have studied these authors,
will find this book an extraordinarily interesting tour of this
little recognized and frequently misunderstood genre.
General
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