Victorian parables
By: Susan E. Colón
Series: Continuum new directions in religion and literature; New directions in religion and literature
Publisher: Continuum International Pub. Group
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 158
ISBN-13: 9781441146502; 9780826443489; 9781441121370; 9781441148261
Subjects: Christianity in literature; English fiction; History and criticism; Parables in literature; Christianity and literature; History
Description: "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. Colṇ 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"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [139]-152) and index.