Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination
Ebook
Examining the creative thought that arose in response to 19th-century religious controversies, this book demonstrates that the pressures exerted by historical methods of biblical scholarship prompted an imaginative recovery of wisdom literature.
During the Victorian period, new approaches to the interpretation of sacred texts called into question traditional ideas about biblical inspiration, motivating literary transformations of inherited symbols, metaphors, and forms.
Drawing on the theoretical work of Paul Ricoeur, Denae Dyck considers how Victorian writers from a variety of belief positions used wisdom literature to reframe their experiences of questioning, doubt, and uncertainty: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George MacDonald, George Eliot, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner. This study contributes to the reassessment of historical and contemporary narratives of secularization by calling attention to wisdom literature as a vital, distinctive genre that animated the search for meaning within an increasingly ideologically diverse world.
Challenging the notion that the 19th-century was a time of declining faith, this book demonstrates instead that a range of Victorian writers and thinkers dealt with religious doubt by creatively recovering biblical wisdom literature.
Revises popular understandings of the Victorian period as an age of declining faith
Recovers a largely overlooked genre of religious discourse: wisdom literature
Demonstrates that conflicts about biblical interpretation informed creative ways of making meaning
Focuses on a range of key male and female writers of the Victorian period
Introduction: Biblical Interpretation, Victorian Writers, and Wisdom Literature
Chapter 1: Wisdom's Call: Poetic Dialogue and the Echoes of Job in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's A Drama of Exile
Chapter 2: Wisdom's Footsteps: Heuristic Pathways and Proverbial Aphorisms in George MacDonald's Phantastes
Chapter 3: Wisdom's Turn: Historical Recovery, Narrative Possibility, and the Direction of Biblical Parables in George Eliot's Romola
Chapter 4: Wisdom's Reach: Mythmaking, Incarnational Poetics, and Interpretive Limits in John Ruskin's The Queen of the Air
Chapter 5: Wisdom's Breath: Revelation, Concealment, and the Energy of Ecclesiastes in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm
Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination challenges assumptions of the Victorian 'crisis of faith' by repositioning faith as a dialogic journey of questions, doubt and belief. Dyck transgresses the secular/sacred binary, revealing biblical criticism's pervasive influence on nineteenth-century literature.
Dyck offers a compelling account of the crucial place of biblical wisdom literature in shaping the Victorian literary imagination. She offers brilliant insights about the legacy of Schleiermacher and opens new approaches to thinking about the secular, hospitality, and dialogue.
Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination is an original and important corrective to our usual ways of discussing the Bible in Victorian scholarship. Dyck's argument is straightforward but also profound. She shows how a focus upon the wisdom literature of the Bible (such as the Protestant wisdom books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, as well as the Gospel parables) takes us beyond the usual questions about Biblical history, and thus she unfolds more of the rich complexity of Victorian religious culture. Indeed, Dyck shows us the special value of wisdom literature during an epoch when ancient history is widely acknowledged as a thorny and problematic concept. We have needed this book.
- Title: Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination
- Author: Denae Dyck
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350335394, 9781350335370, 1350335371, 1350335398
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350335394
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T08:28:57Z
Denae Dyck is Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University. Her publications include articles in Victorian Poetry, Victorian Review, European Romantic Review, and Christianity and Literature.