This course will address literature that imagines the end of the world, from the poetry of William Blake and to the fiction of Mary Shelley and beyond. Galvanized by the American and French Revolutions, a number of later eighteenth writers were optimistic, anticipating the immanent start of a thousand years of peace prior to the Second Coming. However, post-revolutionary disappointment, as well as concerns over population growth and industrialization, fueled apocalyptic visions that cut across literary genres. How do apocalyptic writings intersect with the period’s theories of history, the genre of the gothic, or aesthetic categories like the sublime? Where do theological beliefs map onto and diverge from secular approaches to political events? The coda to the course will reach forward to the turn of the 21st century in order to reflect on a long lineage of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic reckonings in writing, cinema, television, and drama. Readings may include Priestley, Blake, Godwin, Malthus, Mary and Percy Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Beddoes, and others. (Poetry, Fiction,1650 - 1830)