Publisher Description

This book examines the attempts of four great Victorians to write what amounted to latter-day 'Pilgrim's Progresses'. Writing in and for an age whose spiritual needs and assumptions differed utterly from those of Bunyan, they produced very different kinds of books from his - but books which still owed as much to the puritan tradition of Pilgrim's Progress and Quarles Emblems, of spiritual biography and the typological reading of scripture, as to the secular redefinition of that tradition in the early nineteenth century. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus represents the closest convergence-point of these two sources. In its effort to combine traditional religious language and later Romantic ideas within the doctrine of 'natural supernaturalism', it may be seen as the prototypical Victorian novel - a Pilgrim's Progress whose hero must write his own guidebook, his own book of life. Professor Qualls uses Carlyle as a context for studying the thematic concerns and narrative activities of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

Author Biography

Susan J. Wolfson is professor of English at Princeton University. In addition to this present volume, her editorial work includes "Felicia Hemans" (Princeton UP, 2000) and the Longman Cultural Edition of "John Keats," With Claudia Johnson, she is coeditor of the Longman Cultural Edition of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," With Peter Manning, she is coeditor of the Romantics volume in "The Longman Anthology of British Literature," and Selected Poems of Lord Byron (Penguin, 2005). Her critical books include the prize-winning "Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism" (Sta

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; Note on texts and abbreviations; Introduction: The WORD made novel; 1. Carlyle in 'Doubting Castle'; 2. The terrible beauty of Charlotte Brontë's 'natural supernaturalism'; 3. Transmutations of Dickens' emblematic art; 4. Speaking through parable: George Eliot; Conclusion: the novel as book of life; Notes; Index.

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This book examines the attempts of four great Victorians to write what amounted to latter-day 'Pilgrim's Progresses'.

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This book examines the attempts of four great Victorians to write what amounted to latter-day 'Pilgrim's Progresses'.

Description for Bookstore

This book examines the attempts of four great Victorians to write what amounted to latter-day 'Pilgrim's Progresses'. Writing in and for an age whose spiritual needs and assumptions differed utterly from those of Bunyan, they produced very different kinds of books; 'Pilgrim's Progresses' whose heroes must write their own guidebooks, their own books of life.

Description for Library

This book examines the attempts of four great Victorians to write what amounted to latter-day 'Pilgrim's Progresses'. Writing in and for an age whose spiritual needs and assumptions differed utterly from those of Bunyan, they produced very different kinds of books; 'Pilgrim's Progresses' whose heroes must write their own guidebooks, their own books of life.

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