UID:
almahu_9948619157002882
Format:
1 online resource (xiii, 158 pages).
Edition:
Electronic reproduction. London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Available via World Wide Web.
Edition:
Access limited by licensing agreement
ISBN:
9781474211581
Series Statement:
Continuum new directions in religion and literature
Content:
"The familiar stories of the good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and Lazarus and the Rich Man were part of the cultural currency in the nineteenth century, and Victorian authors drew upon the figures and plots of biblical parables for a variety of authoritative, interpretive, and subversive effects. However, scholars of parables in literature have often overlooked the 19th-century novel, assuming that realism--the fiction of the probable and the commonplace--bears no relation to the subversive, iconoclastic genre of parable. But the Victorian literary engagement with the parable genre was not merely a matter of the useful or telling allusion. Susan E. Colón shows that authors such as Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and Charlotte Yonge appreciated the power of parables to deliver an ethical charge that was as unexpected as it was disruptive to conventional moral complacency. Against the common assumption that the genres of realism and parable are polar opposites, this study explores how Victorian novels, despite their length, verisimilitude, and multi-plot complexity, can become parables in ways that imitate, interpret, and challenge their biblical sources."--
Content:
The familiar stories of the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, and Lazarus and the rich man were part of the cultural currency in the nineteenth century, and Victorian authors drew upon the figures and plots of biblical parables for a variety of authoritative, interpretive, and subversive effects. However, scholars of parables in literature have often overlooked the 19th-century novel, assuming that realism bears no relation to the subversive, iconoclastic genre of parable. In this book Susan E. Colòn shows that authors such as Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and Charlotte Yonge appreciated the power of parables to deliver an ethical charge that was as unexpected as it was disruptive to conventional moral ideas. Against the common assumption that the genres of realism and parable are polar opposites, this study explores how Victorian novels, despite their length, verisimilitude, and multi-plot complexity, can become parables in ways that imitate, interpret, and challenge their biblical sources.
Note:
Preface \ 1. Parable as Literature, Literature as Parable \ 2. The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Parable and Realism \ 3. "The Parable of Actual Life": Charlotte Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe \ 4. Prodigal Sons in the Fiction of Margaret Oliphant \ 5. "The Agent of a Superior": Stewardship Parables in Our Mutual Friend \ Afterword \ Notes\ Bibliography \ Index
,
Also issued in print
Additional Edition:
Original
Language:
English
DOI:
10.5040/9781474211581
URL:
https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474211581?locatt=label:secondary_bloomsburyCollections
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