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entails a thoroughly negative evaluation of the event(s) described, in traditional mythology, as well as in the Bible, it has very positive connotations and is meant to convey hope and truth. The traditional narrative that has come to be known as apocalypse was fully formed only with the advent of Christianity. It has narrative antecedents in the Old Testa- ment, and individual components of the apocalyptic story can be traced even further back to the ancient civilizations of the Vedic Indians, Egyptians, Persians, Mesopota- mians, and Greeks. The etymological root of the world apocalypse is the Greek apoka- lypsis, meaning ‘unveiling’ or ‘uncovering,’ but the word, as it denotes cosmic events, is not used before it appears specifically attached to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, where it refers to the divine revelation experienced by St. John of Patmos, who is shown the coming struggle between good and evil and God’s ulti- mate judgement upon the world.11 The semantic change of the term “apocalypse” has its roots in the Romantic period around 1800, with the appearance of the figure of “the last man” in the cultural imaginary. Examples of this literary and artistic figure of a lonely survi- vor amid the ruins of civilisation can be found in Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man (1826) or John Martin’s oil painting by the same title (1849). In this cultural and artistic trope, Eva Horn sees a departure from the original apocalyptic vi- sion as divine intervention towards the secular catastrophe of a godforsaken humanity.12 As a result of Enlightenment philosophy, with its emphasis on rea- son, humans as individuals, and the natural sciences, the belief in God as the sole omnipotent ruler has become radically undermined. Instead, humankind is thrown back upon itself, as expressed by depictions of “the last man”. In continuation of the developments that had started in the Romantic era, “Last Man narrative became popular in literature, and, increasingly in the twen- tieth century, the cinema”.13 In the process, the apocalypse almost completely lost its original meaning of revelation and hope and has come to signify disaster or the end of humanity instead: “The result is that a story which was grounded in hope about the future has become instead a reflection of fears and disillusion- ment about the present, a bleak shift in emphasis from the belief in an ordered universe with a cogent history to one in which the overriding sense is of a cha- otic, indifferent, and possibly meaningless universe.”14 Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy partially mirrors this shift, yet it is also ambiguous and very self-conscious about its treatment of the apocalypse, both as a plot element and as a discourse. 11 Rosen 2008, xiii. 12 Horn 2014, 47. 13 Korte 2008, 152. 14 Rosen 2008, xiv. Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden? | 35www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50