Såsom i en spegel: Drömmar och visioner som portar till det övernaturliga i Michael O’Briens romansvit Children of the Last Days

• The success of the realist novel was parallel to the gradual exorcising of the supernatural from the cosmos through the advance of scientific explanations. The disenchantment of Nature and Man pushed the larger religious vision of reality into the realms of fantasy, dreams, intoxication and madness. This situation makes it problematic for religious authors to build upon their religious worldviews within the limitations of a realist novel, without, so to speak, breaking with the underlying ontology of the genre. The novel then turns into fantasy, or a hybrid as magical realism, but loses its claim to veracity. The issue in focus in this article is the challenges facing a religious author when a case is made for realism in which also the supernatural is included. This literary strategy is an attempt to widen the realist framework, instead of, for example, circumventing it by the creation of an alternative fantasy world. For the discussion, the article uses examples from the novel series Children of the Last days by Michael O’Brien, a contemporary Canadian novelist and painter.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Religionsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Religious Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Realism

Apocalypse

Catholic Fiction

Secularisation

Michael O’Brien

Vision

Dream

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)