Epics of Disaffection

Epics of Disaffection is an exploration of the epic imagination. It brings a historian's sensibility and expertise to bear on four eccentric works of literary genius, each of a different genre: The Lord of the Rings, War and Peace, and two books by the historian E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class and The Sykaos Papers. Each underwent a metamorphosis in the course of composition, emerging as an account of a historical crisis - actual or fictional - set in a broader temporal context. Each acquired an epic theme, tone, and structure, becoming a narrative that contemplates human experience in the light not just of history but of eternity. The book links this thematic and formal convergence to the authors' personal encounter with history and politics, which in each case included military combat. The books are dissenting histories, and epics of disaffection, because the epic transformation was triggered in each case by a prophetic urge arising from the author's profound alienation from modernity and sense of being at the mercy of history.