Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:07:49.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - The Bible, the Novel, and the Veneration of Culture

from Part I - Rethinking the Secular at the Origins of the English Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2021

Kevin Seidel
Affiliation:
Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia
Get access

Summary

Chapter 2 connects histories of the English Bible to histories of the English novel. When culture is understood to be a kind of secular scripture, the intellectual problems involved in telling the origins of the English novel – that is, the change that occurs in English prose fiction during the eighteenth century – do not get resolved so much as displaced by other problems, such as the rise of the middle class (Ian Watt) or the twin crises of truth and virtue (Michael McKeon) or the advent of the print-media entertainment industry (William Warner). This chapter discusses a recent exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, two passages from Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789), and Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory to suggest how we might approach culture differently in literary studies and how we might thereby reassemble the secular at the origins of the English novel in a way that opens up new questions about novelistic realism. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of why it matters to think through the postsecular and the postcritical together.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking the Secular Origins of the Novel
The Bible in English Fiction 1678–1767
, pp. 37 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×