For a bit of fun, I thought I'd look up books that feature solar eclipses. It turns out that solar eclipses have often been used as harbingers of doom or metaphors for destruction as in the example of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This largely draws on historical, cultural, and religious interpretations of this natural event. Scientific studies of today tend to downplay the dangers of a solar eclipse, but before our current technologies could predict approaching solar eclipses, they were unexpected and often frightening or spiritual events. These mentalities live on in various aspects of cultures spiritualities, and storytelling, including literature. Below, I have assembled a list of books which feature solar eclipses. Enjoy!
Image Description: A depiction of the stages of a solar eclipse. A black background with a totally eclipsed sun at the center and half-moon shapes winging out to the left and right.
Credit: Bryan Goff / Unsplash
Books, Poems, and Stories Featuring Solar Eclipses:
- The Fur Country by Jules Verne
- The Odyssey by Homer
- King Solomon's Mines by Henry Rider Haggard
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Pharaoh by Bolesław Prus
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- The Secret Mountain by Enid Blyton
- "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
- Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun by Hergé
- "Eclipse by Emily Dickinson
- "Chrysalis" by Arthur Sze
- Gerald's Game by Stephen King
- Dolores Clairborne by Stephen King
- Eclipse by Erin Hunter
- Voyage: A Novel of 1896 by Sterling Hayden
- El Eclipse by Augusto Monterroso
- Eclipse of the Sun by Phil Whitaker
- Sunwing by Kenneth Oppel
- Pitch Black: Fight Evil with Evil by Frank Lauria and David Twohy
- Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
- Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
- Trade Winds to Meluhha by Vasant Davé
- "Eclipse" by Robert Frost
- "Seeing the Eclipse in Maine" by Robert Bly
- "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman
- Black Robe by Brian Moore
- Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer
- Solar Eclipse by John Farris
- The Eclipse of the Century by Jan Mark
- Eclipse by John Banville
- Shroud by John Banville
- The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
- A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
- Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart
- The Eclipse by Willer de Oliveira
- Samson Agonistes by John Milton
- "The Solar Eclipse" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- "High Noon at Lost Alamos" by Eleanor Wilner
Sources:
- Solar Eclipses in Literature - 7 Books with Eclipses (Mind on Fire Books): https://mindonfirebooks.com/2024/04/03/solar-eclipses-in-literature-7-books-with-eclipses/
- Stephen King, Shakespeare, and Many Writers Agree: Eclipses are Doom (Atlas Obscura): https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eclipse-fiction-books
- Solar eclipses in fiction (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipses_in_fiction
- Solar eclipses have been a science fiction theme for thousands of years (Vox): https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/18/16158544/solar-eclipses-science-fiction
- Poetry and the Magic of Solar Eclipses (Poem Verse): https://poemverse.org/poems-about-solar-eclipse/
- 5 Magnificent Poems About Solar Eclipse (Poem Home): https://poemhome.net/solar-eclipse-poetry/
Add comment
Comments