Knowledge and Mortality : Anagnorisis in Genesis and Narrative Fiction

Aristotle identifies the transformation from ignorance to knowledge, or anagnorisis as crucial to dramatic tension. Using the Biblical garden as the locus classicus of anagnorisis in Western narrative fiction, this study establishes the connection between knowledge and mortality in Genesis, and analyzes anagnorisis and mortality in three nineteenth-century British novels, Middlemarch, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Pride and Prejudice, and in the postmodern novel Possession. Ultimately, it is a proof that the suffusing literary motif of knowledge and mortality is inescapable: it transcends fictional genre and period because the knowledge of mortality is humanity's most ontologically disturbing burden.