The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel

Rachel A. Kent

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349576197, 9781137541338
• eBook ISBN: 9781137522917
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Dramatically refreshing the age-old debate about the novel's origins and purpose, Kent traces the origin of the modern novel to a late medieval fascination with the wounded, and often eroticized, body of Christ. A wide range of texts help to illustrate this discovery, ranging from medieval 'Pietàs' to Thomas Hardy to contemporary literary theory.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Novel’s Liturgical Origins, Pursuit of Presence, and Pained Aesthetics
• 1 The Laity’s Triumph: Evolutions of Medieval Christology, Liturgy, and Lay Devotional Practice
• 2 The Wooden Pietà’s Use and Inspiration in Late Medieval Beguine Communities
• 3 Housing for “Excess”: Protestantism, Textuality, and the Novel’s Late Medieval Capacities in a Post-Reformation Cosmos
• 4 Humor and Inconclusiveness: The Modern Novel’s Experimental Origins and Hermeneutical Future
• 5 The Scandalous Divinity of “Madame Edwarda” and “My Mother”: Georges Bataille’s Atheist “Theology” of the Incarnation, Community, and Ethics
• 6 Thomas Hardy’s Phenomenology and Redemption for Michael Henchard through the Victorian Feminine
• 7 The Short Story as Presence Encounter: Eden, the Aging Body, and the Suckled Breast in Maupassant and Steinbeck’s Literary Pietás
• Conclusion The World Recreated: Lame Margareta of Magdeburg’s Experimental Theology and Ethics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index