Didactic Novels and British Women's Writing, 1790-1820

Havens, Hilary

doi:10.4324/9781315629001

Cited by 2 publications

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“…The most well-known of these is Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605,1615) which bizarrely warns against the perils of reading. Many eighteenth-century novels, such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751), Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1747-8), Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4), contain didactic ingredients (Havens, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Soft War Against the Church: Reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a Didactic Novel

Jawad¹,

Jabir²,

Hussain³

2021

JSSH

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Many works of literature are devoted to giving readers explicit or implicit instructions or teachings about a philosophy, an ideology, a craft, a lifestyle, or other ends. These works are supposed to entertain and teach and, accordingly, they are labeled as didactic literature. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (DVC) is a highly controversial novel that has been largely debated and discussed because of its content and intended message. In this novel, Brown intentionally presents an alternative understanding to Christianity which is received mostly as heretic and blasphemous. In many occasions, Brown avers that the visions he gave in his DVC are the findings of his research on Christian doctrines and institutions. Thus, they are accurate facts though they are written in a piece of fiction. He also emphasizes that he aims to share newly acquired knowledge with his audience through the pages of his work. This paper is an attempt to study Brown’s DVC as a didactic novel. It ultimately aims to show how Brown manipulated the didactic theory of sugar-coated pill in his DVC to teach Christians about the theology and history of their religion. Adopting a descriptive-analytic method, the study first tackles Brown’s Christian ideology. Then, it analyzes his DVC showing how he used different devices and techniques of didactic novels for the purpose of instructing his readers. The study concludes that DVC is not a mere piece of fiction but a didactic novel that used fiction as a cover to pass historical and theological teachings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Soft War Against the Church: Reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a Didactic Novel

Jawad¹,

Jabir²,

Hussain³

2021

JSSH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Danish Catechism in Action? Examining Religious Formation in and through Erik Pontoppidan'sMenoza

Lied

2019

Stud. Church hist.

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In 1737 Erik Pontoppidan, a Danish bishop of pietist leanings, published a Lutheran catechism, Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed (Truth unto Godliness), which became the Church of Denmark's official catechism for the following fifty years, with new editions being printed in Norway into the twentieth century. For a figure largely overlooked by modern scholarship, he has enjoyed an extraordinarily lengthy influence over Christian formation in Scandinavia and in Norwegian immigrant communities in the USA. Pontoppidan not only left behind this ‘official’ programme of Christian education, but also an unofficial blueprint, Menoza (1742–3). This opbyggelse (‘edifying’) novel recounts the conversion of an imaginary Indian prince, Menoza, and his subsequent travels around Europe. Menoza might even be said to offer its readers an alternative or additional Lutheran catechism in literary form. This article examines Menoza's Christian formation in the light of Pontoppidan's official catechism. Which topics of the catechism receive emphasis or are downplayed? Does the progression and linking of doctrinal topics match the catechism's layout or does the author restructure Christian theology for pedagogical purposes? The article also considers the non-doctrinal elements of the characters’ catechesis, especially in relation to pietist expectations regarding conversion. What indoctrination, intentional or unintentional, into the vocabulary and experience of pietist culture did Pontoppidan offer his Scandinavian readers?

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Didactic Novels and British Women's Writing, 1790-1820

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

A Soft War Against the Church: Reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a Didactic Novel

A Soft War Against the Church: Reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a Didactic Novel

Danish Catechism in Action? Examining Religious Formation in and through Erik Pontoppidan'sMenoza

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