Victorian Conversion Narratives and Reading Communities. Emily Walker Heady

ISBN-13: 9781138272347 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 182 str.

Emily Walker Heady

Opis

Reading canonical authors such as John Henry Newman, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Oscar Wilde through a dual lens of literary history and post-liberal theology, Emily Walker Heady suggests that Victorian authors discuss conversion experiences in the context of the modes in which they are narrated. Thus, conversion narratives became a form of literary criticism, while literary conventions functioned as a means of discussing the nature of conversion.

Recenzje

’Heady’s book demonstrates the centrality of the religious idea of conversion to Victorian authors whose modern readers are not themselves religious. ...valuable and rewarding...’ Journal of Theological Studies

Spis treści

Contents: Introduction; How a capitalist converts: Dickens's theology and the realism of Dombey and Son; 'Must I render an account?': the ethics of genre in Charlotte Brontë's Villette; Gambling on conversion: the problem of relativism in Daniel Deronda; To sum up, to judge: the aesthetics of truth in Heart of Darkness; The afterlife of Oscar Wilde's conversion, or, what self-consciously literary college students say on Facebook; Works cited; Index.

O autorze

Emily W. Heady is Dean of the College of General Studies and Professor of English at Liberty University, USA. Her recent work has appeared in The Journal of Narrative Theory, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and Prose Studies.