Abstract

Berge Meere und Giganten (BMG) by Alfred Döblin is a fictional account of future events in which humanity brings about the ruin of western civilization by its own technological hubris. Although BMG has been examined considerably for its literary merit in light of the Döblin corpus, few scholars have identified Döblin's work as an apocalyptic text especially after the Judeo-Christian tradition. The apocalyptic nature of BMG implies a profound religious experience on the part of the author, which in my view offers at least one plausible explanation for Döblin's repeated fixation with BMG. In my thesis, I explicate the apocalyptic themes of BMG by considering the intertextuality of the apocryphal Book of the Watchers, the canonical Book of Revelation from the New Testament with some of its connections to Babylonian mythology, and finally the function of the author as a conduit of the literary tradition of apocalypticism. Ultimately, I demonstrate that BMG draws heavily from these apocalyptic texts and is consistent with the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition, which utilizes the descriptions of macroscopic catastrophes in human history as a metaphor of spiritual transformation.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; Germanic and Slavic Languages

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2011-12-08

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd4878

Keywords

Alfred Döblin, Apocalypse, Apocalyptic, Apocalypticism, Berge Meere und Giganten (BMG), Book of Revelation, Book of the Watchers, Nephilim, Promethean

Language

English

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