Yet Alive? Methodists in British Fiction since 1890

Download or read book Yet Alive? Methodists in British Fiction since 1890 written by David Dickinson and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading the novels of George Eliot, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Barry Unsworth, and others, as a Methodist, David Dickinson offers a colourful picture of Methodists in British fiction since the close of the nineteenth century. In the first century and a half of the denomination’s influence, many novels treated Methodist themes, settings and characters – and several authors were themselves Methodist – but as Methodism declined, its appearances in modern English literature diminished. Nevertheless, it retains a strong, if paradoxical, presence in popular imagination, fed in part by its fictional depiction. Yet Alive? argues that, despite, or perhaps because of, the process of secularisation, novels depicting Methodists play an important role in literature’s ongoing exploration of spiritual, religious and theological themes, and that Methodists have much to learn from the way authors see them.