Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ

Description

This book tells the story of how nineteenth-century writers turned to the realist novel in order to reimagine Jesus during a century where traditional religious faith appeared increasingly untenable. Re-workings of the canonical Gospels and other projects to demythologize the story of Jesus are frequently treated as projects aiming to secularize and even discredit traditional Christian faith. The novels of Charles Kingsley, George Eliot, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Mary Augusta Ward, however, demonstrate that the work of bringing the Christian tradition of prophet, priest, and king into conversation with a rapidly changing world can at times be a form of authentic faith-even a faith that remains rooted in the Bible and historic Christianity, while simultaneously creating a space that allows traditional understandings of Jesus' identity to evolve.

Jessica Hughes is Director of Liberal Arts and Assistant Professor of English and Theology at George Fox University, USA.

"The ubiquity of Christ is not just a theological principle; it's also a fact of Victorian culture. Jessica Ann Hughes has brilliantly taken on this alpha and omega of all themes, and traced it insightfully across some of the period's influential works of fiction. Jesus in the Victorian Novel is Victorian Studies at its very best." * Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, USA and author of A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians * "Mainstream Victorian realists reimagined Jesus not to debunk the Christian story, as Jessica Hughes shows, nor to secularize it, but rather to relocate it within a decidedly modern sensibility. Such is the premise of this spectacular, beautifully argued book. Along the way, too, we encounter much additional intrigue: German higher criticism, the period's tensions between theology and science, rival atonement theories, and-perhaps most interesting of all-the question of how best to represent God in fiction. Some works are especially easy to recommend. This is one of them." * Ryan J. Stark, Professor of Humanities, Corban University, USA *