Lure of the Arcane

The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4214-0958-0
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Explore 2,000 years of conspiracy in fiction.

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Fascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret societies, and conspiracies through various literary manifestations—drama, romance, epic, novel, opera—down to the thrillers of the twenty-first century.

Lure of the Arcane considers Euripides’s Bacchae, Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, among other seminal works. Mimicking the genre’s quest-driven narrative arc, the reader searches for the significance of conspiracy fiction and is rewarded with the author’s cogent reflections in the final chapter. After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco’s notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact “a secret without content.”

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ziolkowski, Theodore

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction
1. The Mystery Cults of Antiquity
2. The Order of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages
3. The Rosicrucians of the Post-Reformation
4. The Lodges of the Enlightenment
5. Secret Societies of Romantic Socialism
6. Modern Variations
7. Interlude: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
8. The Playfulness of Postmodernism
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ziolkowski, Theodore
Theodore Ziolkowski is a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Alchemist in Literature: From Dante to the Present.

Theodore Ziolkowski is a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Alchemist in Literature: From Dante to the Present.