1st Edition
Victorian Conversion Narratives and Reading Communities
By Emily Walker Heady
Copyright 2013
184 Pages
by
Routledge
182 Pages
by
Routledge
182 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Because Victorian authors rarely discuss conversion experiences separately from the modes in which they are narrated, Emily Walker Heady argues that the conversion narrative became, in effect, a form of literary criticism. Literary conventions, in turn, served the reciprocal function as a means of discussing the nature of what Heady calls the 'heart-change.' Heady reads canonical authors such as... Read more
Contents: Introduction; How a capitalist converts: Dickens's theology and the realism of Dombey and Son; 'Must I render an account?': the ethics of genre in Charlotte Brontë's Villette; Gambling on conversion: the problem of relativism in Daniel Deronda; To sum up, to judge: the aesthetics of truth in Heart of Darkness; The afterlife of Oscar Wilde's conversion, or, what self-consciously literary college students say on Facebook; Works cited; Index.
Biography
Emily W. Heady is Dean of the College of General Studies and Professor of English at Liberty University, USA. Her recent work has appeared in The Journal of Narrative Theory, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and Prose Studies.
’Heady’s book demonstrates the centrality of the religious idea of conversion to Victorian authors whose modern readers are not themselves religious. ...valuable and rewarding...’ Journal of Theological Studies
