The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination

Zusatztext “[Frederic’s] most brilliant achievement.” — Edmund Wilson Informationen zum Autor Joyce Carol Oates , the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, is the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and criticism. Noteworthy among her many novels are them, Blonde , and the recent Middle Age: A Romance . Klappentext Published in 1896! The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination is a profound psychological portrait of the spiritual undoing of a guileless Methodist minister who is taken in by a rural townspeople's various progressive ideas! from liberalism to bohemianism! only to be spurned by them for being too conventional. Described by Everett Carter as "among the four or five best novels written by an American during the nineteenth century!” the novel! as Joyce Carol Oates writes in her Introduction! has "shrewd! disturbing insights into the human pysche.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the authoritative Harold Frederic Edition. Chapter I No such throng had ever before been seen in the building during all its eight years of existence. People were wedged together most uncomfortably upon the seats; they stood packed in the aisles and overflowed the galleries; at the back, in the shadows underneath these galleries, they formed broad, dense masses about the doors, through which it would be hopeless to attempt a passage. The light, given out from numerous tin-lined circles of flaring gas-jets arranged on the ceiling, fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces—some framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded or crowned with shining baldness—but all alike under the spell of a dominant emotion which held features in abstracted suspense and focussed every eye upon a common objective point. The excitement of expectancy reigned upon each row of countenances, was visible in every attitude—nay, seemed a part of the close, overheated atmosphere itself. An observer, looking over these compact lines of faces and noting the uniform concentration of eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed that they were watching for either the jury’s verdict in some peculiarly absorbing criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers in a great lottery. These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting throng—the hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse decree. But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of jus- tice nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the coming year. This list was evidently written in a hand strange to him, and the slow, near-sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and then adjusted them over his nose with annoying deliberation, was now silently rehearsing his task to himself—the while the clergymen round about ground their teeth and restlessly shuffled their feet in impatience. Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage, there were a great many of these clergymen. A dozen or more dignified, and for the most part elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop in the pulpit. As many others, not quite so staid in mien, and indeed with here and there almost a suggestion of frivolity in their postures, were seated on the steps leading down from this platform. A score of their fellows sat facing the audience, on chairs tightly wedged into the space railed off round the pulpit; and then came five or six rows of pews, stretching across the whole breadth of the church, and almost solidly filled with preachers of the Word. ...

Product details

• Authors: Harold Frederic, Joyce Carol Oates
• Publisher: Modern Library PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.05.2002
• EAN: 9780375760358
• ISBN: 978-0-375-76035-8
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Modern Library Classics; Modern Library Classics
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature