The Re-Conceptualization of Space in Edwardian Prophecy Fiction: Heterotopia, Utopia and the Apocalypse

Abstract

In the early twentieth century a subgenre of religious writing emerged that has been described as prophecy fiction (Gribben, 2009, p. 22). Like modernist literature, it articulates a reaction to, and against, modernity. However, in contrast to the mostly cerebral and frequently covert engagement of modernist fiction with religious experience recently argued for by Pericles Lewis (p. 51), these texts retorted affirmatively and hortatively to the widespread crisis of faith of their time with literary (re)visions of scriptural apocalyptic prophecy and the remapping of religious community.¹ Based on the Book of Revelation, they envisaged the creation of an imaginary community in correlation with a heterotopian and, ultimately, utopian reconfiguration of space. Sydney Watson (1847–1917)² and Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914)³ were among the first to explore the emerging genre.⁴ Widely disseminated in evangelical subculture, like Watson’s seminal rapture trilogy, In the Twinkling of an Eye, The Mark of the Beast and Scarlet and Purple, published probably between 1904–13,⁵ or attempting to subvert Protestant humanitarianism with a specifically Catholic vision, like Benson’s Lord of the World (1907), these texts offered an affirmative response to the nomic crisis experienced in modern society. More specifically, by realigning prophecy and the perception of reality, these narratives solicited the active participation of their readers in the creation of an imaginary community and its infiltration of the spaces of real life.