Literary histories of the novel tend to assume that religion naturally gives way to secularism, with the novel usurping the Bible after the Enlightenment. This book challenges that teleological conception of literary history by focusing on scenes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fiction where the Bible appears as a physical object. Situating those scenes in wider circuits of biblical criticism, Bible printing, and devotional reading, Seidel cogently demonstrates that such scenes reveal a great deal about the artistic ambitions of the novels themselves and point to the different ways those novels reconfigured their readers' relationships to the secular world. With insightful readings of the appearance of the Bible as a physical object in fiction by John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Sarah Scott, Frances Sheridan, and Laurence Sterne, this book contends that the English novel rises with the English Bible, not after it.
Author(s): Kevin Seidel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 325
01.0_pp_i_ii_Rethinking_the_Secular_Origins_of_the_Novel
02.0_pp_iii_iii_Rethinking_the_Secular_Origins_of_the_Novel
03.0_pp_iv_iv_Copyright_page
04.0_pp_v_vi_Contents
05.0_pp_vii_vii_Figures
06.0_pp_viii_viii_Tables
07.0_pp_ix_ix_Appendixes
08.0_pp_x_xii_Acknowledgments
09.0_pp_1_12_Introduction
10.0_pp_13_64_Rethinking_the_Secular_at_the_Origins_of_the_English_Novel
10.1_pp_15_36_A_Secular_for_Literary_Studies
10.2_pp_37_64_The_Bible_the_Novel_and_the_Veneration_of_Culture
11.0_pp_65_154_Versions_of_Biblical_Authority
11.1_pp_67_93_Sanctifying_Commodity_The_English_Bible_Trade_around_the_Atlantic_16601799
11.2_pp_94_124_Prop_of_the_State_Biblical_Criticism_and_the_Forensic_Authority_of_the_Bible
11.3_pp_125_154_Object_of_Intimacy_Devotional_Uses_of_the_Eighteenth-Century_Bible
12.0_pp_155_261_Uses_of_Scripture_for_Fiction
12.1_pp_157_178_Traveling_Papers_Pilgrims_Progress_and_the_Book
12.2_pp_179_201_Surprised_by_Providence_Robinson_Crusoe_as_Defoes_Theory_of_Fiction
12.3_pp_202_230_Resilient_to_Narrative_Clarissa_after_Reading
12.4_pp_231_257_Breaking_Down_Shame_Narrating_Trauma_and_Repair_in_Tristram_Shandy
12.5_pp_258_261_Conclusion
13.1_pp_262_263_The_appearance_of_the_Bible_as_a_physical_object_in_Early_English_Prose_Fiction_EEPF_and_Eighteenth-
13.2_pp_264_265_The_appearance_of_the_Bible_as_a_physical_object_prose_fiction_in_English_Eighteenth-Century_Collect
13.3_pp_266_267_Appendix_3
13.4_pp_268_269_Appendix_4
13.5_pp_270_271_Appendix_5
14.0_pp_272_295_Notes
15.0_pp_296_319_Works_Cited
index (1)
