Logos Bible Software
Sign In
Products>Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century

Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century

Publisher:
, 2021
ISBN: 9781501351792
Be the first to rate this.

Ebook

Ebooks are designed for reading and have few connections to your library.
See Inside

$36.85

Longlisted for the 2022 International Gothic Association's Allan Lloyd Smith Prize

Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century – Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others – Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology.

Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic.

This theological reading of canonical texts of the 19th-century Gothic posits the religious themes of the Gothic as essential to understanding the form as a whole.

Examines how the Gothic can be useful to contemporary theology, especially in explaining and exploring imaginative apologetics
Will appeal to both literary scholars interested in theology and theologians interested in literature
The author is thoroughly embedded in the rapidly growing field examining the intersections of the Gothic and theology and has a significant following on Twitter as a literary critic

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Gothic [and religion] and theology
1. Monstrosity and the problem of evil: A theologico-literary understanding of personhood in Frankenstein and Paradise Lost
2. 'Sinners in the hands of an angry God': Gothic revelation and monstrous theology in the Gothic's Calvinist legacy
3. Gothic writing and political theology: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre as theological texts
4. 'Through a glass darkly': Reading the Victorian ghost story theologically
5. The limitations of materialism: Fin-de-siècle Gothic, sin and subjectivity and the insufficiency of degeneration
Conclusion: Through the Gothic castle, back to theology
Bibliography
Index

Jonathan Greenaway's Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century offers a critically important and intellectually nuanced perspective into the often neglected relationship between Gothic literature and theology, within a Christian framework.

Brilliantly redressing the hitherto overlooked relationship between Gothic literature and theology, Greenaway's book offers a sensitive and fresh way into 19th-century imaginings of monstrosity, evil, spectrality and sin. More than a spotlight on cultural, political and psychological anxiety, Greenaway's Gothic is an access point to the inexplicable existence of the supernatural in works by Shelley, Hogg, the Brontës and Wilde. Theology, Horror and Fiction ultimately reveals God in dark and terrifying places wherein the ordinary is made strange by the religious and mystical as much as by the weird and mysterious.

In Theology, Horror and Fiction, Greenaway demonstrates how 19th-century Gothic literature intervened in ongoing theological debates. But even more than this, he compellingly argues that the Gothic constituted - and continues to constitute - an imaginative theology in its own right, offering readers new ways of finding God at work in the world. In its careful examination of some of the most beloved novels of the 19th century, including Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, this deeply researched and eminently accessible study will interest literary critics, as well as historians and religious studies scholars of all levels.

Theology, Horror and Fiction takes its place among recent scholarship that has recognized Gothic fiction's investment in theological debate and controversy. Through a series of nuanced close readings, Jonathan Greenaway shows 19th-century Gothic writers engaging creatively and often subversively with theological ideas, from images of divine and artistic creation to Calvinist hermeneutics and critiques of predestination. Greenaway reads 19th-century Gothic fiction not only as a genre that reflects the religious debates of its time, but as a creative resource for continued reflection on theological claims in the present.

Jonathan Greenaway is Researcher in Theology and Horror at the University of Chester, UK.

Reviews

0 ratings

Sign in with your Logos account

    $36.85