The late medieval origins of the modern novel
By: Rachel A. Kent
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781137541338
Subjects: LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General; LITERARY CRITICISM / General; LITERARY CRITICISM / Books & Reading; History and criticism; Influence; Christianity; Medieval Civilization; LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval; Fiction
Description: "The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel dramatically refreshes the age-old debate regarding the novel's origins and purpose. Acknowledging the excellence of Doody, Moore, and Pavel's recent work, scholarship has yet to account for literature's final ability, after millennia of engagement with royalty, heroes, epic journeys, morality tales, and political satire, to embrace the sexual, pained byways of the ordinary man and woman in the early modern period. Contrasting theories of the novel as a Protestant inheritance, this book ties the startling ontology and aesthetics of late medieval spirituality to the form's scandalous, experimental early modern emergence.  Recalling these origins, Kent reestablishes the novel theoretically as a landscape of vulnerable 'presence encounter', and not primarily as a 'meaning event'. From James to Kundera to Robbe-Grillet, Kent engages literary theorists hinting at this primary 'presence' purpose. She closes by exploring literary 'Pietás' within Hardy, Maupassant, and Bataille. "--

"This work suggests the European novel as the gift of late medieval Christianity's erotic, pained aesthetics and participatory devotional practices. Recalling these origins mark the novel as a site of "presence encounter" and not "meaning event," and the work explores the challenging implications for literary theory and criticism"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction: The Novel's Liturgical Origins, Pursuit of Presence, and Pained Aesthetics; title: 1. The Laity's Triumph: Evolutions of Medieval Christology, Liturgy, and Lay Devotional Practice; title: 2. The Wooden Pietá's Use and Inspiration in Late Medieval Beguine Communities; title: 3. Housing for "Excess": Protestantism, Textuality, and the Novel's Late Medieval Capacities in a Post-Reformation Cosmos; title: 4. Humor and Inconclusiveness: The Modern Novel's Experimental Origins and Hermeneutical Future; title: 5. The Scandalous Divinity of "Madame Edwarda" and "My Mother": Georges Bataille's Atheist "theology" of the Incarnation, Community, and Ethics; title: 6. Thomas Hardy's Phenomenology and Redemption for Michael Henchard through the Victorian Feminine; title: 7. The Short Story as Presence Encounter: Eden, the Aging Body, and the Suckled Breast in Maupassant and Steinbeck's Literary Pietás; title: Conclusion: The World Recreated: Lame Margareta of Magdeburg's Experimental Theology and Ethics.