caa a22 4500 397552009 CHVBK 20180308164752.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161202e199612 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1093/litthe/10.4.329 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)oxford-10.1093/litthe/10.4.329 Hapgood Lynne The Nottingham Trent University ‘THE RECONCEIVING OF CHRISTIANITY': SECULARISATION, REALISM AND THE RELIGIOUS NOVEL: 1888-1900 [Elektronische Daten] [Lynne Hapgood] The argument is concered with the contribution of fiction to the secularisation of religion and, in particular, with the development in fiction of a secular religious discourse. The literacy tradition under scrutiny is Victorian social realism and the religious context is the perceived failure of the Church oof England to address the needs of the working classes and the challenge of Socialism and other materialist philosophies in the late Victorian period. A group of ‘social redemption' novels is used to interrogate these issues, and the significant influences underlying the complex historical, sociological and religious lanscape in which they are located are indentified. The use of fiction as reconciler of spiritual, material and political conflict within society and the status of novels as religious and doctrinal authority are investigated. Questions about the relationship between intellectual inquiry and resolution through feeling in the novel form are explored. Finally, the attempt of realistic fiction to dismantle Christian symbolism in order to materialise its social meaning through secular structures or to merge spiritual and political discourses by articulating Christian eithics through soicialist terminology is exmained and its achivement evaluated. © Oxford University Press Articles nationallicence Literature and Theology Oxford University Press 10/4(1996-12), 329-350 0269-1205 10:4<329 1996 10 litthe https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/10.4.329 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/10.4.329 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Hapgood Lynne The Nottingham Trent University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Literature and Theology Oxford University Press 10/4(1996-12), 329-350 0269-1205 10:4<329 1996 10 litthe Metadata rights reserved CC BY-NC-4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-oxford