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.
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
Coda
Bibliography
Index
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