From the Twilight of the Millennium. Visions of a Futures Past with Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Jack London

Abstract

Drawing from “La bustina di Minerva” by Umberto Eco published in L’Espresso in December 2003, this short investigation will attempt to establish significant connections between post-apocalyptic science fiction and the enunciative strategies used by current media in the depiction the future since the onset of Covid 19. Main references will include writings by Stephen King (namely The Stand, 1978); Jack London (The Scarlett Plague, 1912); Edgar Allan Poe (The Masque of the Red Death, 1842) and Robert Matheson (I am Legend, 1954). Particular attention will be focused on media’s suggested narrative: “an opportunity not to be missed” — in other words, the idea that the current global pandemic can represent a chance to conceive a better world, almost a new new beginning. In this regard, through the tools of semiotics, we will attempt to demonstrate how the same type of rhetoric reverberates throughout the narrative structures that make phase 2 an archetype of genre literature.