The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel

Dramatically refreshing the age-old debate about the novel's origins and purpose, Kent traces the origin of the modern novel to a late medieval fascination with the wounded, and often eroticized, body of Christ. A wide range of texts help to illustrate this discovery, ranging from medieval 'Pietàs' to Thomas Hardy to contemporary literary theory.

Dramatically refreshing the age-old debate about the novel's origins and purpose, Kent traces the origin of the modern novel to a late medieval fascination with the wounded, and often eroticized, body of Christ. A wide range of texts help to illustrate this discovery, ranging from medieval 'Pietas' to Thomas Hardy to contemporary literary theory.

Introduction: The Novel's Liturgical Origins, Pursuit of Presence, and Pained Aesthetics1. The Laity's Triumph: Evolutions of Medieval Christology, Liturgy, and Lay Devotional Practice2. The Wooden Pietà's Use and Inspiration in Late Medieval Beguine Communities3. Housing for "Excess": Protestantism, Textuality, and the Novel's Late Medieval Capacities in a Post-Reformation Cosmos4. Humor and Inconclusiveness: The Modern Novel's Experimental Origins and Hermeneutical Future5. The Scandalous Divinity of "Madame Edwarda" and "My Mother": Georges Bataille's Atheist "theology" of the Incarnation, Community, and Ethics6. Thomas Hardy's Phenomenology and Redemption for Michael Henchard through the Victorian Feminine7. The Short Story as Presence Encounter: Eden, the Aging Body, and the Suckled Breast in Maupassant and Steinbeck's Literary PietásConclusion: The World Recreated: Lame Margareta of Magdeburg's Experimental Theology and Ethics