Apocalyptic Visions and Utopian Spaces in Late Victorian and Edwardian Prophecy Fiction

Prophecy fiction emerged around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It is suggested in this article that, like modernist literature, it articulates a reaction to, and against, modernity, providing an alternative response to its fragmenting, decentering, and spiritually draining impact on traditional societies. In contrast to the mostly cerebral engagement of modernist fiction with religious experience recently argued for by Pericles Lewis, these texts are shown to retort affirmatively and exhortatively to the widespread crisis of faith of their time with literary (re)visions of scriptural apocalyptic prophecy. It is argued that prophecy fiction amalgamates utopian and apocalyptic elements in order to promote a specific imagined community and its spatial correlative.