Introduction

LaPorte, Charles; Lecourt, Sebastian

doi:10.1525/ncl.2018.73.2.147

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Put differently, as Lecourt and LaPorte have recently described, "[r]eligion, unmoored from the domain of official power, migrates into the realm of consumer choice, where individuals may choose from the assortment of 'ultimate meanings' and experiment with different kinds of association and affirmation." 29 As the searching believer's speculations, these "doors and only doors" come to look quite a bit like this "assortment" of spiritual associations. The novel does not explore what is behind each of these doors, but they represent for Irene a series of possibilities, of which only one leads to the godlike grandmother.…”

Section: Architecture and The Nova Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

George MacDonald's Doors: Suspended Telos and the Child Believer

Plourde¹

2021

Victorian Literature and Culture

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George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin (1872) is frequently read as a reflection of the scandalous theological doctrine conventionally attached to the author's name, the principle of universalism. But if the fairy tale seems to serve up an optimistic teleology of faith—belief triumphant, no matter the long odds—it also undermines its own project. The very overwrought Christian symbols that most seem to depict MacDonald's universalism in fact suggest its opposite, imagining spiritual progress and individual growth as contingent, indeterminate, and perpetually in process. Recognizing that representations of progress in MacDonald's Princess books are compromised at best and deliberately diverted, more likely, reveals a surprisingly inconsistent treatment of childhood, which he imagines not—or not just—as the telos of spiritual growth but also as a state of suspended development. In this way, The Princess and the Goblin endorses the concept of terminal spirituality while theorizing religious subjectivity as an intermittent temporal process.

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Section: Architecture and The Nova Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

George MacDonald's Doors: Suspended Telos and the Child Believer

Plourde¹

2021

Victorian Literature and Culture

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Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'

Stiles

2020

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Positive thinking is good for you. You can become healthy, wealthy, and influential by using the power of your mind to attract what you desire. These kooky but commonplace ideas stem from a nineteenth-century new religious movement known as 'mind cure' or New Thought. Related to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, New Thought was once a popular religious movement with hundreds of thousands of followers, and has since migrated into secular contexts such as contemporary psychotherapy, corporate culture, and entertainment. New Thought also pervades nineteenth- and early twentieth-century children's literature, including classics such as The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and A Little Princess. In this first book-length treatment of New Thought in Anglophone fiction, Anne Stiles explains how children's literature encouraged readers to accept New Thought ideas - especially psychological concepts such as the inner child - thereby ensuring the movement's survival into the present day.

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Religion Counts: Faithful Realism and Historical Representation in George Eliot’s Romola

Bonfiglio

2024

Religions

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This article explores the importance of faith in the Victorian historical novel, with a particular focus on George Eliot’s Romola (1862–1863), and rethinks past secularist approaches to the genre. Romola was arguably the most meticulously researched historical novel of the nineteenth century. Set in Florence from 1492 to 1498, the novel traces the rise and fall of the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, as he pursued the spiritual and political reform of the city, leading to his excommunication and martyrdom. Despite the religious setting of the novel, Eliot’s painstaking effort to imagine a realistic historical representation of Florentine society has often been approached in secular terms as a tour de force of the author’s humanist vision of a progressive march towards modernity. Building on recent work in postsecular studies, this essay rethinks the novel’s historical realism in terms of Christian faith. Centering on the spiritual journey of the protagonist, Romola de’ Bardi, the novel presents a faithful depiction of Renaissance Florence by imagining historical representation as an act of faith. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s essay, “Faith and Knowledge”, the article analyzes how Eliot frames the significance of the novel’s historical representation as an act of faith that one’s life is bound meaningfully to those of others.

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Introduction

Cited by 3 publications

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George MacDonald's Doors: Suspended Telos and the Child Believer

George MacDonald's Doors: Suspended Telos and the Child Believer

Children's Literature and the Rise of ‘Mind Cure'

Religion Counts: Faithful Realism and Historical Representation in George Eliot’s Romola

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