Victorian Conversion Narratives and Reading Communities

Heady, Emily Walker

ISBN 10: 1409453774 / ISBN 13: 9781409453772

Published by Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013

About this Item

pp. 182.

Seller Inventory # 58068777

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Victorian Conversion Narratives and Reading Communities
• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Company
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1409453774
• ISBN 13: 9781409453772
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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 John Henry Newman, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde through a dual lens of literary history and post-liberal theology. As Heady shows, these authors question the ability of realism to contain the emotionally freighted and often jarring plot lines that characterize conversion. In so doing, they explore the limits of narrative form while also shedding light on the ways in which conversion narratives address and often disrupt the reading communities in which they occur.

About the Author

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.