Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Creation and Apocalypse in Feminist Speculative Fiction

Creation and Apocalypse in Feminist Speculative Fiction

McFarland, Lois W.
Mason, Emma
Knight, Mark

Hardcover

Series: New Directions in Religion and Literature

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1350568945
ISBN13: 9781350568945
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 248
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Exploring nine works of contemporary feminist speculative fiction by Rhoda Lerman, Angela Carter, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman, this book asks how biblical myths of creation and apocalypse can intensify characters' emotions or distract them from dealing with the more immediate problems presented by climate crisis, conflict, social inequality and other distressing realities.

Engaging with affect theory - the study of emotion - across feminist, womanist and queer biblical reception history, this book argues that certain myths can become, in the words of Sara Ahmed, 'sticky', attaching themselves (and their associated emotions) to certain people, stories or ideas. It asks how and why these stories 'stick', and how this can shine a light on the societies reflected in the novels as they respond to debates within the feminism(s) of their time. The book takes negative emotions such as rage, loneliness, depression and disgust, and explores how these operate on and through fictional characters, who in many cases cannot escape the pull of Eden or the push of apocalypse. These novels impel the reader to identify moments in which such characters may (or may not) 'stay with the trouble', as Donna Haraway would put it, rather than giving in to the seductive dream of beginning afresh.

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