Reading Revelation as Pastiche: Imitating the Past

Scholars have often read the book of Revelation in way that attempts to ascertain which other Old Testament book it most resembles. Instead, we should read it as a combined and imitative text which actively engages the audience through signalling to multiple texts and multiple textual experiences: in short, it is an act of pastiche.

Fletcher analyses the methods used to approach Revelation's relationship with Old Testament texts and shows that, although there is literature on Revelation's imitative and multi-vocal nature, these aspects of the text have not yet been explored in sufficient depth. Fletcher's analysis also incorporates an examination of Greco-Roman imitation and combination before providing a better way to understand the nature of the book of Revelation, as pastiche. Fletcher builds her case on four comparative case studies and uses a test case to ascertain how completely they fit with this assessment. These insights are then used to clarify how reading Revelation as imitative and combined pastiche can challenge previous scholarly assumptions, transforming the way we approach the text.

• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Ch. 1: Reviewing the Past: Previous Studies and Approaches
• Ch. 2: Re-Visualising the Past: Ancient Imitation and Combination
• Ch. 3: Pastiche: Imitation and Combination
• Ch. 4: Listening to All the Voices: Reading Plurality in Revelation 1
• Ch. 5: Once Upon a Time in Babylon: Reading Revelation 17 Affectively
• Ch. 6: Revelation 18: Far From the Past?
• Ch. 7: Apocalypse Noir: Re-Reading Genre Through Pastiche
• Ch. 8: Conclusions
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Filmography
• Index