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A literary criticism is presented for the book "The Purple Cloud" by M.P. Shiel. It mentions that the novel charts the global wanderings of Adam Jeffson, the seeming sole human survivor of a supervolcanic eruption. It states that system of volcanoes and evolutionary pressures in the novel re-inscribe humanity within the environment, questioning the idea that advances in civilization. An overview of the story is presented.

The Marquis de Sade’s writing is often associated with the explosive force of the volcano. The violence and destruction of the natural phenomenon inspires the libertinage of his most ‘sadian’ of works. But there are other subterranean motifs that warrant comparison, especially since they connect Sade’s pornography with his avowed writing. The mine and the tomb, appearing in texts he signs, seem to reject and corroborate, respectively, the volcanic imagery and ethos. Brought together, these images create a dialectic in which Sade’s authorial persona morphs from one idiosyncratic space to the next. Starting with his enigmatic will, which condemns the posterity of the author to nothingness – a disappearance from ‘the memory of men’ –, this study will treat his will as an intermediary text in a process of circular retractions. I argue that the absence of a tombstone is part of a larger metaphorical alchemy that the marquis uses to contemplate the totality of his ‘Great Work’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an examination of the social and dramatic history of the theatrical depiction of volcanic eruptions set in Oceania during the 19th century in Europe, Australia and the United States. Topics addressed include the various symbolic meanings of the volcano in 19th-century plays, the prominent role of melodrama and spectacle within the period's dramatic aesthetics, and specific analysis of plays such as "La Mort du capitaine Cook," by Jean-Francois Arnould.

Observers of seventeenth-century London often used anatomical or geographical metaphors when writing about an early modern city undergoing rapid physical, commercial, and demographic expansion. Between the 1640s and 1680s, the writer and diarist John Evelyn regularly used volcanic language and imagery to evoke a cityscape blighted by dense clouds of smoke emitted by the city's industrial furnaces. This vision of a 'volcanic' city was personal, inspired by Evelyn's exploration of Vesuvius in 1645, while reflecting a broader scientific and popular fascination with volcanic activity. Considered in the immediate political context, the 'volcanic' city was both a powerful expression of royalist anxiety about the instability of the capital, and an assertion of the need for a powerful monarch to actively regulate the social and commercial energies of the metropolis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sicily's uneven geological structure is positioned within a system of tectonic plates, and its very active volcano has always made it prone to disasters. Many Sicilian cities have in fact been destroyed by natural events many times over the centuries. This can certainly be understood negatively as the destruction of entire towns, the emission of volcanic ash, and the mutation of landscapes by a terrifying force have instilled fearful memories in local populations. But from another point of view one must consider the positive elements of Etna. Its beautiful landscapes were a major attraction on the Grand Tour, and its inhabitants have long associated the volcano with the concept of rebirth and fertility. This paper analyzes two age groups of residents in the town of Nicolosi and is a small part of an ongoing research project that is much more complex, involving representative samples of the entire population of several towns around Etna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the trial and execution of Marie-Antoinette on 16 October 1793 with the performance, two days later, of Sylvain Maréchal's hit play Le Jugement dernier des rois, which staged the death of all of Europe's monarchs by an exploding volcano. What links them is the revolutionary concept of rupture, in which the historical breach with the past, associated with the death of the king, was to have established a new temporal relation between events. This article contends that the continued existence of the queen after the symbolic act of regicide and the official beginning of a new time reflects a profound crisis in the revolutionary self-image, a crisis fictively resolved by Maréchal's utopian depiction of a world-historical revolution in which all of Europe's monarchs are naturally extinguished. For the volcano shows how revolutionary history requires the supplement of a symbolic terror in order to reintegrate events within a linear history of progress. By contextualizing the queen's trial within its own present, when revolutionary history was being actively constructed, this article aims to shed new light on the relation between revolutionary violence and the experience of time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This article discusses a selection of the literary output provoked and inspired by the eruption of Soufrière Hills Volcano on Montserrat — notably poetry and prose written by Montserratians affected by the disaster. It argues that literature can be a source of local knowledge, and a window into a culture that is seeking to deal with a tragedy. It can also be used to assess outreach efforts and to investigate the impact of volcanic events – and of volcanological information – on local populations. The texts describe the process by which Montserratians moved from bewilderment and denial to renewal and re-identification, and even pride in the volcanic activity and their own ability to live with it — and to help prepare other Caribbean islands for future volcanic events. Literature looks both backwards and forwards, communicating the acts of experiencing and changing. On Montserrat, that applies both to colonialism and the role of the UK in Montserrat''s political, economic and social life, and also to the importance of learning volcanology, and welcoming volcanologists, as a means of survival. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This essay surveys the volcano spectacles, paintings, plays, and narratives that appear at the end of the eighteenth century, thrive in the nineteenth, and live on well into the twentieth. Moving amphibiously between popular and high culture, this polymodal 'commodity experience' imagines historical change as catastrophe, and projects the modern into the past and the forces of modernity onto the natural world. Its ability to absorb political content in part underwrites the success of the volcano story, and in such nineteenth-century versions as Edward Lytton Bulwer's The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), the volcano is identified with the crowd and with revolution. But alongside the political allegory, a more basic audience delight in destruction itself seems part of the lingering power of the volcano. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the literary works of poet Gary Snyder and composer Alan Hovhaness on Mount St. Helens. Snyder climbed St. Helens four times between August 1945 and June 1949. It examines Synder's "Mt. St. Helens," the opening section of "Danger on Peaks," with "Volcano" from Hovhaness' "Mt. St. Helens" Symphony. It compares Hovhaness' aesthetic with that of Snyder.

Se ofrecen varias representaciones artísticas de los volcanes Popocatépetl e Iztaccíhuatl, en México, incluyendo las pinturas "La leyenda de los volcanes" de Jesús Helguera, "Hacienda de Chimalpa" de José María Velasco y "La sombra del Popo" de Gerardo Murillo. También se reproducen fragmentos de los poemas "Iztaccíhuatl" y "Malpaís" de José Emilio Pacheco y del texto "Bajo el Volcán" de Malcolm Lowry.

The entire corpus of Icelandic Family Sagas contains no express reference to volcanic fires. This article explores the reasons behind this puzzling absence in a genre whose realism is rightly celebrated. I propose to read a unique, oblique reference in Grettis saga as possible evidence of a submerged vernacular theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section from Chapter 17 of the book "Frommer's Italy 2010" offers guides for traveling to Mount Etna in Italy. It warns about possible eruptions of the volcano. It provides an overview of the representation of the volcano in history and Greek mythology. The section also presents instructions for using means of transportation to the area.