A. S. Byatt, Ragnarok: The End of the Gods

Richard Todd (Universiteit Leiden)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2011

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

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In 2011 Byatt published a novella,

Ragnarok

, with Canongate (Edinburgh), as part of that publisher’s “Myths” series, of which the best-known and most commercially successful example hitherto is Philip Pullman’s

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

(2010).

Ragnarok: The End of the Gods is set in the Blitz of WW2 (1940-42, and intermittently on until the V1 and V2 attacks in spring 1945) and its aftermath fifty years later. It was inspired, as the dedication testifies, by the gift to her from Byatt’s mother (Marie Drabble, néé Bloor) of Asgard and the Gods, an 1880 translation and adaptation of the early nineteenth-century German compilation by the mythographer Dr W[ilhelm] Wägner. It clearly led to a moment of life-changing discovery, perhaps not as intensely immediate

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2533 words

Citation: Todd, Richard. "Ragnarok: The End of the Gods". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 July 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33483, accessed 16 April 2024.]

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