![]() ![]() A wide spectrum, within which no firm dividing line can be drawn, extends from authentically apocalyptic visions to accounts of large-scale Disaster it would therefore be over-pedantic in this discussion to construe "world" as "planet". The phrase itself has become looser in meaning once the Comte du Buffon (1707-1788) had in Epochs of Nature ( 1780) popularized the notion that a whole series of "worlds" had occupied the Earth's surface, the finality of any particular end of the world became dubious. Visions inspired by the religious imagination go back into antiquity (see Mythology Religion), and the artist John Martin depicted vast biblical catastrophes with particular relish from the 1820s to the 1850s but the influence of the scientific imagination did not make itself felt in literature until the late nineteenth century, and the end-of-the-world theme maintained many of its religious overtones until more recently. Together with Utopias and cautionary tales, apocalyptic visions form one of the three principal traditions of pre-twentieth-century futuristic fantasy. ![]()
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