Entre eschatologie et apocalypse : Le Discours de la fin dans l’œuvre de Sylvain Trudel

Abstract

In the French Canadian author Sylvain Trudel’s works, mysterious powers are devising ways to destruct the world. Some characters nevertheless resist the idea of an anticipated disaster: they protect themselves from the eschatological threat, and it seems at some point possible to avoid the end. Does it mean that the eschatology is here only a partial apocalypse and that the dreaded death might be an illusory finitude? Can’t Western civilizations, obviously still steeped in Judeo-Christian dualism, get rid of a reality where death is considered a simple void that escapes any understanding, thus forcing the eschatological imagination to build upon it? Mythocritics is used here to determine how the eschatological subtext permeates today’s literature to the extent where the founding mythic stories might be obscured, and to examine how the concept of ending underlies the characters’ adventures. Do death’s representations give one a chance to hope that humanity can survive the coming catastrophe?

Keywords:

• Eschatology
• myth
• literature
• Québec
• death
• disaster

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean-Pierre Thomas

Jean-Pierre Thomas is Associate Professor at York University, in Toronto, where he has been teaching French Language and Literature since 2005. His main research interests are French Canadian literature, mythologies, and graphic novels.