Victorian parables /

Col�on, Susan E.

Victorian parables / Susan E. Col�on. - London ; New York : Continuum International Pub. Group, 2012. - xiii, 158 pages ; 22 cm. - Continuum new directions in religion and literature . - New directions in religion and literature. .

Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-152) and index.

Parable as literature, literature as parable -- The extraordinary in the ordinary: parable and realism -- The parable of actual life: Charlotte Yonge's The heir of Redclyffe -- Prodigal sons in the fiction of Margaret Oliphant -- The agent of a superior : stewardship parables in Our mutual friend.

"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. Col? 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"--

9781441146502 1441146504 9780826443489 0826443486 9781441121370 1441121374 9781441148261 1441148264

40020742204

2011028609

GBB1D1564 bnb

015969503 Uk


English fiction--History and criticism.--19th century
Parables in literature.
Christianity and literature--History--England--19th century.
Christianity in literature.

PR 878 .R5 / C65 2012