Victorian Parables

The familiar stories of the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, andLazarus andthe 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. Colon shows thatauthors 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. >

Product details

• Authors: Dr Susan E. Colon, Susan E Colon, Susan E. Colon
• Assisted by: Mark Knight (Editor), Emma Mason (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.02.2012
• EAN: 9780826443489
• ISBN: 978-0-8264-4348-9
• No. of pages: 176
• Series: New Directions in Religion and Literature; New Directions in Religion & L; New Directions in Religion and Literature; New Directions in Religion and; New Directions in Religion & L
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies