| |
| | Paley, "Apocalypse Without Millennium" - _The Last Man_ by Mary Shelley - Electronic Editions, Romantic Circles |
 | | Behind the ridicule, however, there is a suggestion that the imagination resists the idea of Lastness, an idea that presupposes a recipient or reader whose very existence negates the Lastness of the narrating subject. |
 | | The word "last", it is to be lamented, is not sufficiently final to preclude the emulative subsequency of all we leave behind: we cannot close the doors of language on the thousand little beginnings that tread on the heels of the safest conclusion. |
 | | In The Last Man, the date is preserved, but the nameless and genderless narrator reduces the participants to herself and her companion, and makes it the occasion of a marvelous discovery. |
| www.rc.umd.edu /editions/mws/lastman/paley.htm (4676 words) |
|