Emma Mason - Böcker

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is regarded as one of the greatest Christian poets to write in English. While Rossetti has firmly secured her place in the canon, her religious poetry was for a long time either overlooked or considered evidence of a melancholic disposition burdened by faith. Recent scholarship has redressed reductive readings of Christian theology as repressive by rethinking it as a form of compassionate politics. This shift has enabled new readings of Rossetti's work, not simply as a body of significant nineteenth-century devotional literature, but also as a marker of religion's relevance to modern concerns through its reflections on science and materialism, as well as spirituality and mysticism.Emma Mason offers a compelling study of Christina Rossetti, arguing that her poetry, diaries, letters, and devotional commentaries are engaged with both contemporary theological debate and an emergent ecological agenda. In chapters on the Catholic Revival, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, contemporary debates on plant and animal being, and the relationship between grace and apocalypse, Mason reads Rossetti's theology as an argument for spiritual materialism and ecological transformation. She ultimately suggests that Rossetti's life and work captures the experience of faith as one of loving intimacy with the minutiae of creation, a divine body in which all things, material and immaterial, human and nonhuman, divine and embodied, are interconnected.

In recent decades, reception history has become an increasingly important and controversial topic of discussion in biblical studies. Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of biblical texts, reception history focuses on exploring the history of interpretation. In doing so it locates the dominant historical-critical scholarly paradigm within the history of interpretation, rather than over and above it. At the same time, the breadth of material and hermeneutical issues that reception history engages with questions any narrow understanding of the history of the Bible and its effects on faith communities.The challenge that reception history faces is to explore tradition without either reducing its meaning to what faith communities think is important, or merely offering anthologies of interesting historical interpretations. This major new handbook addresses these matters by presenting reception history as an enterprise (not a method) that questions and understands tradition afresh. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible consciously allows for the interplay of the traditional and the new through a two-part structure. Part I comprises a set of essays surveying the outline, form, and content of twelve key biblical books that have been influential in the history of interpretation. Part II offers a series of in-depth case studies of the interpretation of particular key biblical passages or books with due regard for the specificity of their social, cultural or aesthetic context. These case studies span two millennia of interpretation by readers with widely differing perspectives. Some are at the level of a group response (from Gnostic readings of Genesis, to Post-Holocaust Jewish interpretations of Job); others examine individual approaches to texts (such as Augustine and Pelagius on Romans, or Gandhi on the Sermon on the Mount). Several chapters examine historical moments, such as the 1860 debate over Genesis and evolution, while others look to wider themes such as non-violence or millenarianism. Further chapters study in detail the works of popular figures who have used the Bible to provide inspiration for their creativity, from Dante and Handel, to Bob Dylan and Dan Brown.

Recent scholarship in nineteenth-century literary studies consistently recognizes the profound importance of religion, even as it marginalizes the topic. There are few, if any, challenging yet manageable introductions to religion and literature in the long-nineteenth century, a factor that serves to fuel scholars' neglect of theological issues. This book aims to show how religion, specifically Christianity, is integral to the literature and culture of this period. It provides close readings of popular texts and integrates these with accessible explanations of complex religious ideas. Written by two scholars who have published widely on religion and literature, the book offers a detailed grounding in the main religious movements of the period 1750-1914. The dominant traditions of High Anglicanism, Tractarianism, Evangelicalism, and Roman Catholicism are contextualized by preceding chapters addressing dissenting culture (primarily Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism andQuakerism), and the question of secularization is considered in the light of the diversity and capacity for renewal within the Christian faith. Throughout the book the authors untangle theological and church debates in a manner that highlights the privileged relationship between religion and literature in the period. The book also gives readers a language to approach and articulate their own "religious" readings of texts, texts that are often concerned with slippery subjects, such as the divine, the non-material and the nature of religious experience. Refusing to shut down religious debate by offering only narrow or fixed definitions of Christian traditions, the book also questions the demarcation of sacred material from secular, as well as connecting the vitality of religion in the period to a broader literary culture.

Recent scholarship in nineteenth-century literary studies consistently recognizes the profound importance of religion, even as it marginalizes the topic. There are few, if any, challenging yet manageable introductions to religion and literature in the long-nineteenth century, a factor that serves to fuel scholars' neglect of theological issues. This book aims to show how religion, specifically Christianity, is integral to the literature and culture of this period. It provides close readings of popular texts and integrates these with accessible explanations of complex religious ideas. Written by two scholars who have published widely on religion and literature, the book offers a detailed grounding in the main religious movements of the period 1750-1914. The dominant traditions of High Anglicanism, Tractarianism, Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism are contextualized by preceding chapters addressing dissenting culture (primarily Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism and Quakerism), and the question of secularization is considered in the light of the diversity and capacity for renewal within the Christian faith. Throughout the book the authors untangle theological and church debates in a manner that highlights the privileged relationship between religion and literature in the period. The book also gives readers a language to approach and articulate their own 'religious' readings of texts, texts that are often concerned with slippery subjects such as the divine, the non-material and the nature of religious experience. Refusing to shut down religious debate by offering only narrow or fixed definitions of Christian traditions, the book also questions the demarcation of sacred material from secular, as well as connecting the vitality of religion in the period to a broader literary culture.

In recent decades, reception history has become an increasingly important and controversial topic of discussion in biblical studies. Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of biblical texts, reception history focuses on exploring the history of interpretation. In doing so it locates the dominant historical-critical scholarly paradigm within the history of interpretation, rather than over and above it. At the same time, the breadth of material and hermeneutical issues that reception history engages with questions any narrow understanding of the history of the Bible and its effects on faith communities.The challenge that reception history faces is to explore tradition without either reducing its meaning to what faith communities think is important, or merely offering anthologies of interesting historical interpretations. This major new handbook addresses these matters by presenting reception history as an enterprise (not a method) that questions and understands tradition afresh. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible consciously allows for the interplay of the traditional and the new through a two-part structure. Part I comprises a set of essays surveying the outline, form, and content of twelve key biblical books that have been influential in the history of interpretation. Part II offers a series of in-depth case studies of the interpretation of particular key biblical passages or books with due regard for the specificity of their social, cultural or aesthetic context. These case studies span two millennia of interpretation by readers with widely differing perspectives. Some are at the level of a group response (from Gnostic readings of Genesis, to Post-Holocaust Jewish interpretations of Job); others examine individual approaches to texts (such as Augustine and Pelagius on Romans, or Gandhi on the Sermon on the Mount). Several chapters examine historical moments, such as the 1860 debate over Genesis and evolution, while others look to wider themes such as non-violence or millenarianism. Further chapters study in detail the works of popular figures who have used the Bible to provide inspiration for their creativity, from Dante and Handel, to Bob Dylan and Dan Brown.

This engaging volume provides readers with the essential criticism on nineteenth-century poetry, organised around key areas of debate in the field. The critical texts included in this volume reflect both a traditional and modern emphasis on the study of poetry in the long nineteenth century. These are then tied up by a newly written essay summarising the ideas and encouraging further study and debate.The book includes:sections on Periodization; ‘What is Poetry?’; Politics; Prosody; Forms; Emotion, feeling, affect; Religion; Sexuality; and Sciencework by writers such as William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkinscritics and historians including Isobel Armstrong, Richard Cronin, Jason Rudy, Joseph Bristow and Gillian BeerDetailed introductions and critical commentary by Francis O’Gorman, Rosie Miles, Stefano Evangelisto, Natalie Hoffman, Martin Dubois, Gregory TateProviding both the essential criticism along with clear introductions and analysis, this book is the perfect guide to students who wish to engage in the exciting criticism and debates of nineteenth-century poetry.

This engaging volume provides readers with the essential criticism on nineteenth-century poetry, organised around key areas of debate in the field. The critical texts included in this volume reflect both a traditional and modern emphasis on the study of poetry in the long nineteenth century. These are then tied up by a newly written essay summarising the ideas and encouraging further study and debate.The book includes:sections on Periodization; ‘What is Poetry?’; Politics; Prosody; Forms; Emotion, feeling, affect; Religion; Sexuality; and Sciencework by writers such as William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkinscritics and historians including Isobel Armstrong, Richard Cronin, Jason Rudy, Joseph Bristow and Gillian BeerDetailed introductions and critical commentary by Francis O’Gorman, Rosie Miles, Stefano Evangelisto, Natalie Hoffman, Martin Dubois, Gregory TateProviding both the essential criticism along with clear introductions and analysis, this book is the perfect guide to students who wish to engage in the exciting criticism and debates of nineteenth-century poetry.

This Companion explores the Bible's role and influence on individual writers, whilst tracing the key developments of Biblical themes and literary theory through the ages. An ambitious overview of the Bible's impact on English literature – as arguably the most powerful work of literature in history – from the medieval period through to the twentieth-centuryIncludes introductory sections to each period giving background information about the Bible as a source text in English literature, and placing writers in their historical contextDraws on examples from medieval, early-modern, eighteenth-century and Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist literatureIncludes many 'secular' or 'anti-clerical' writers alongside their 'Christian' contemporaries, revealing how the Bible's text shifts and changes in the writing of each author who reads and studies it

William Wordsworth is the most influential of the Romantic poets, and remains widely popular, even though his work is more complex and more engaged with the political, social and religious upheavals of his time than his reputation as a 'nature poet' might suggest. Outlining a series of contexts - biographical, historical and literary - as well as critical approaches to Wordsworth, this Introduction offers students ways to understand and enjoy Wordsworth's poetry and his role in the development of Romanticism in Britain. Emma Mason offers a completely up-to-date summary of criticism on Wordsworth from the Romantics to the present and an annotated guide to further reading. With definitions of technical terms and close readings of individual poems, Wordsworth's experiments with form are fully explained. This concise book is the ideal starting point for studying Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, and the major poems as well as Wordsworth's lesser known writings.

William Wordsworth is the most influential of the Romantic poets, and remains widely popular, even though his work is more complex and more engaged with the political, social and religious upheavals of his time than his reputation as a 'nature poet' might suggest. Outlining a series of contexts - biographical, historical and literary - as well as critical approaches to Wordsworth, this Introduction offers students ways to understand and enjoy Wordsworth's poetry and his role in the development of Romanticism in Britain. Emma Mason offers a completely up-to-date summary of criticism on Wordsworth from the Romantics to the present and an annotated guide to further reading. With definitions of technical terms and close readings of individual poems, Wordsworth's experiments with form are fully explained. This concise book is the ideal starting point for studying Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, and the major poems as well as Wordsworth's lesser known writings.

This title illuminates the importance of the inter-relationship between emotion and religion in women's poetry of the Romantic and Victorian eras.

This title illuminates the importance of the inter-relationship between emotion and religion in women's poetry of the Romantic and Victorian eras.

The authors in this collection join an animated debate on the persistence of Romanticism. Even as dominant twentieth-century cultural movements have contested Romantic ""myths"" of redemptive Nature, individualism, perfectibility, the transcendence of art, and the heart's affections, the Romantic legacy survives as a point of tension and of inspiration for modern writers. Rejecting the Bloomian notion of anxious revisionism, ""The Monstrous Debt"" argues that various kinds of influences, inheritances, and indebtedness exist between well-known twentieth-century authors and canonical Romantic writers. Among the questions asked by this volume are: How does Blake's graphic mythology submit to ""redemptive translations"" in the work of Dylan Thomas? How might Ted Hughes' strong readings of a ""snaky"" Coleridge illuminate the ""mercurial"" poetic identity of Sylvia Plath? How does Shelley ""sustain"" the work of W. B. Yeats and Elizabeth Bishop with supplies of ""imaginative oxygen""? In what ways does Keats enable Bob Dylan to embrace influence? How does Keats prove inadequate for Tony Harrison as he confronts contemporary violence? How does ""cockney"" Romanticism succeed in shocking John Betjeman's poetry out of kitsch into something new and strange? ""The Monstrous Debt"" seeks to broaden our sense of what ""influence"" is by defining the complex of relations that contribute to the making of the modern literary text. Scholars and students of the Romantic era will enjoy this informative volume.

This title features new scholarship informed by both historicist and metaphysical approaches, offering original readings of the poetry of Blake and Wordsworth and their reception. The history of responses to the works of William Wordsworth and William Blake can be divided into those who have tried to enact their poetry, and those who have tried to categorize it. The 'enactors' have themselves often been artists (Felicia Hemans, the pre-Raphaelites, William Hale White, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg); the 'categorizers' - those who have attempted to systematize, theologize, and more recently historicize the poetry - have tended to be academics. The two types of response provide a polarity of the sort that Blake termed 'producers and devourers'. The reception of the two poets is riven by this conflict which provokes the strongest feeling. But which side is right? In addressing this question, Jonathan Roberts takes a leaf from Blake's own book and interrelates the two sides dialectically.Rather than denigrating metaphysical responses in the face of historicist responses, or vice versa, this book argues that not only are both valid, but the conflict between them is staged in the poetry of both Blake and Wordsworth, who press their readers into exploring that relationship. This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

This title features new scholarship informed by both historicist and metaphysical approaches, offering original readings of the poetry of Blake and Wordsworth and their reception. The history of responses to the works of William Wordsworth and William Blake can be divided into those who have tried to enact their poetry, and those who have tried to categorize it. The 'enactors' have themselves often been artists (Felicia Hemans, the pre-Raphaelites, William Hale White, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg); the 'categorizers' - those who have attempted to systematize, theologize, and more recently historicize the poetry - have tended to be academics. The two types of response provide a polarity of the sort that Blake termed 'producers and devourers'. The reception of the two poets is riven by this conflict which provokes the strongest feeling. But which side is right? In addressing this question, Jonathan Roberts takes a leaf from Blake's own book and interrelates the two sides dialectically.

By outlining Protestantism and Englishness in early-modern literature to the present-day, this study reveals how other religious identities can be alienated in British society. "England's Secular Scripture" seeks to trace English Islamophobia to its roots in England's Protestant past, and more specifically to its aesthetic and literary rooting in Protestant values. Carruthers argues that English antagonism towards Islam lies in part in the formation of English identities in early modern Reformation Protestantism. The book traces the transposing, and secularizing, of Reformation doctrines into a 'Protestant aesthetic'; of simplicity, individualism, and rationalism in the literature of Spenser and Milton. Wordsworth, Hardy, Eliot and Orwell, among others, perpetuate this aesthetic, one that continues to shape English mythologies up to the present day. Carruthers sheds light on contemporary Islamophobia, helping us to understand that Englishness is not merely a secular identity (combating what is seen as an irrational fundamentalist identity), but one informed, paradoxically, by Protestant logic and history.This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

By outlining Protestantism and Englishness in early-modern literature to the present-day, this study reveals how other religious identities can be alienated in British society. "England's Secular Scripture" seeks to trace English Islamophobia to its roots in England's Protestant past, and more specifically to its aesthetic and literary rooting in Protestant values. Carruthers argues that English antagonism towards Islam lies in part in the formation of English identities in early modern Reformation Protestantism. The book traces the transposing, and secularizing, of Reformation doctrines into a 'Protestant aesthetic'; of simplicity, individualism, and rationalism in the literature of Spenser and Milton. Wordsworth, Hardy, Eliot and Orwell, among others, perpetuate this aesthetic, one that continues to shape English mythologies up to the present day. Carruthers sheds light on contemporary Islamophobia, helping us to understand that Englishness is not merely a secular identity (combating what is seen as an irrational fundamentalist identity), but one informed, paradoxically, by Protestant logic and history.This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

This title is a consideration of the modern Superhero comic as an expression of spiritual desire, showing what Superheroes can teach about our most essential human needs. Ben Saunders shows that Superhero comics address deep emotional needs. From their earliest days, Superheroes have engaged with some of the most profound spiritual questions that a human being can face: What does it mean to be good? Why is there evil? Why can't I have what I want? How should I live, knowing that I must die? The book suggests these fantasies of power and romance are attempts to wrestle and negotiate with some fundamentally spiritual issues: the problem of evil, the inescapability of human imperfection, and the stark fact of mortality. Saunders argues that the best Superhero comics are not only significant aesthetic achievements - expressions of a misunderstood and under-appreciated art-form as distinctly American as Jazz or Rock & Roll - but that their aesthetic significance derives at least in part from their unique handling of these religious and spiritual themes.With chapters on Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and Iron-Man, he considers these characters as artistic projections of our most primitive desires, and our highest aspirations. This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

This is a critical study of the reinscription of biblical parables in Victorian realist fiction. The familiar stories of the good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and Lazarus and the Rich Man were part of the cultural currency in the nineteenth century, and Victorian authors drew upon the figures and plots of biblical parables for a variety of authoritative, interpretive, and subversive effects. However, scholars of parables in literature have often overlooked the 19th-century novel, assuming that realism - the fiction of the probable and the commonplace - bears no relation to the subversive, iconoclastic genre of parable. But the Victorian literary engagement with the parable genre was not merely a matter of the useful or telling allusion. Susan E. Colon shows that authors such as Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and Charlotte Yonge appreciated the power of parables to deliver an ethical charge that was as unexpected as it was disruptive to conventional moral complacency.Against the common assumption that the genres of realism and parable are polar opposites, this study explores how Victorian novels, despite their length, verisimilitude, and multi-plot complexity, can become parables in ways that imitate, interpret, and challenge their biblical sources. This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins's so-called 'New Atheism' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

The New Atheist Novel is the first study of a major new genre of contemporary fiction. It examines how Richard Dawkins's so-called New Atheism' movement has caught the imagination of four eminent modern novelists: Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Philip Pullman. For McEwan and his contemporaries, the contemporary novel represents a new front in the ideological war against religion, religious fundamentalism and, after 9/11, religious terror: the novel apparently stands for everything freedom, individuality, rationality and even a secular experience of the transcendental that religion seeks to overthrow. In this book, Bradley and Tate offer a genealogy of the New Atheist Novel: where it comes from, what needs it serves and, most importantly, where it may go in the future. What is it? How does it dramatise the war between belief and non-belief? To what extent does it represent a genuine ideological alternative to the religious imaginary or does it merely repeat it in secularised form? This fascinating study offers an incisive critique of this contemporary testament of literary belief and unbelief.

Detailed investigation into a transitional period of the Abbey's history, covering the whole community.This book surveys the monastic community at Westminster from the time when Edward the Confessor [1042-1066] adopted it as his burial church down to the end of the reign of king John. Originating according to legend during the Roman occupation, the West Minster was converted from a little collegiate church into a Benedictine monastery around 970. However, the growth of its significance largely dates from its massive endowment by king Edward, who commissioned a lavish rebuilding of the abbey church, a focal point in his programme of monarchical propaganda. Dr Mason covers every aspect of the abbey community in detail examining the careers of the abbots and priors, whilst ensuring that lesser figures are not neglected: monks; craftsmen; lay servants; the personnel of the royal court who were closely associated with the abbey. The author also considers the community's dealings with the growing ecclesiastical bureaucracy; the management of its properties, including its parochial churches; and its relationship with other religious houses.Dr EMMA MASON teaches in the Department of History, Birkbeck College.

All aboard for the most gripping cosy mystery of the year. Eight passengers board the train. Will any of them survive the journey?When ex-detective Midge McGowan embarks on a sleeper train to Scotland, she's hoping for a nice relaxing trip to enjoy the snowy highlands. Instead, the journey quickly turns into a nightmare.The train has a haunted history, as multiple witnesses have claimed to see a shadowy figure jumping out of the last carriage, before reappearing on board and repeating the loop.. One of the passengers is a mysterious prisoner on release from jail, who won't speak to anyone and remains locked in his cabin, with a guard posted on the door. And then the lights go out, the train stops, and someone turns up dead.Their body is found inside a locked carriage – with no way in or out – so how was the crime committed? Is this really the work of a ghost? Or has one of the guests just pulled off the perfect murder? The only thing Midge knows for sure is that not all of them will reach their destination alive...Readers love Emma Mason:'One of the best books I have read in years' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'Midge is my hero' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'Perfect reading for a wet and windy afternoon.' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'I read this in two days ... I was hooked!' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'Utterly brilliant!' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'A masterclass' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW'Loved this book from start to finish' FIVE-STAR READER REVIEW

❄ As the snow falls, the haunting begins... Get ready for the most gripping cosy murder mystery debut of the year. ❄'Witty, chilling and full of charm… a perfect seasonal mystery.' My Weekly'A delightfully engaging debut, starring one of the most amusing and unusual sleuths I’ve come across. Best enjoyed with a nice glass of sherry!' Tess GerritsenA grand country estate.On her last day as a Detective, Midge McGowan is given the retirement present from hell: a ticket to take part in a haunted house tour. She’ll have to spend the weekend before Christmas ghost-hunting in an isolated mansion with a group of misfits, including a know-it-all paranormal investigator and a has-been pop star.An impossible crime.It isn’t long before the tour starts to spiral out of control. Midge and the guests see an unsettling figure walking the grounds late at night. Then the unthinkable happens – someone is murdered in a room that’s been locked from the inside.A Christmas they might not survive.Heavy snow cuts them off from help, the house’s own dark secrets begin to surface, and Midge can’t shake the creeping sense that they are walking into a nightmare. Could a ghost really be responsible, or is the culprit one of the guests?❄ Readers love Murder Most Haunted ❄'I was hooked from the first page...It's fun, unusual and very mysterious.' - FIVE STAR Reader Review'A delightful debut! The characters leap off the page...and the spooky mystery will keep you guessing.' - Antony Johnston, author of Can You Solve the Murder?'A fab...read blending ghost stories and murder mystery.' - FIVE STAR Reader Review'I was thrilled, beguiled and completely captured by this cracking whodunnit.' - Jonathan Whitelaw, author of The Bingo Hall Detectives

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The 1810s - a decade marked by the challenges of war, monarchy, poverty, religion, and nationalism - are immortalised in Percy Bysshe Shelley's impassioned but despairing sonnet, 'England in 1819', as a graveyard of undead ideologies from which he longs that a 'Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day'. Criticism too often looks past the 1810s and towards the illusory border between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian' to hunt down these bright phantoms and follow their progress into a century of cultural, affective, philosophical, and political transformation. Yet the 1810s were more than a threshold decade from which we were thrown into the beginnings of the modern world. As the essays in this volume reveal, the 1810s brought into focus new questions about subjects as broad as the imagination, literary form, morality, aesthetics, race, politics, the environment, the body, gender, and sexuality.

Rethinking religion and literature in a series of chapters by leading international scholars, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths opens up a dialogue between Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Post-Secular literary cultures.Literary studies has absorbed religion as another interdisciplinary mode of inquiry without always attending to its multifacted potential to question ideologically neutral readings of culture, belief, emotion, politics and inequality. In response, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths contributes to a reevaluation of the nexus between religion and literature that is socially, affectively and materially determined in its sensitivity to the expression of belief.Each section – Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Post-Secularism – is introduced by a specialist in these respective areas to introduce the critical readings of the texts and discourses that follow.

Forgiveness was a preoccupation of writers in the Victorian period, bridging literatures highbrow and low, sacred and secular. Yet if forgiveness represented a common value and language, literary scholarship has often ignored the diverse meanings and practices behind this apparently uncomplicated value in the Victorian period. Forgiveness in Victorian Literature examines how eminent writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde wrestled with the religious and social meanings of forgiveness in an age of theological controversy and increasing pluralism in ethical matters. Richard Gibson discovers unorthodox uses of the language of forgiveness and delicate negotiations between rival ethical and religious frameworks, which complicated forgiveness's traditional powers to create or restore community and, within narratives, offered resolution and closure. Illuminated by contemporary philosophical and theological investigations of forgiveness, this study also suggests that Victorian literature offers new perspectives on the ongoing debate about the possibility and potency of forgiving.