UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Horn, Stacey J.
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2004
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
In their nineteenth-century sentimental novels, Calvinist writers Susan Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe consider the relationship between telling a story and studying God. I see Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850) and Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing (1859) as examples of narrative theology. By the term narrative theology, I mean that, in different ways, Warner and Stowe demonstrate that telling a story and considering one's relationship to God are interdependent projects. In their novels, these authors test the usefulness of different theological ideas in a variety of narrative situations.
My analysis here relies on a foundational principle of narrative theology articulated by Stanley Hauerwas and Gregory L. Jones: "that rationality, methods of argument, and historical explanation have, at least to some extent, a fundamentally narrative form." In my reading of Stowe and Warner's novels, I suggest not only that some ideas may be fundamentally narrative in form, but that some ideas, such as Calvinist doctrine, may fundamentally resist narrative form. I ask, how can these authors unfold stories within a doctrinal framework that claims all events are predetermined? Further, how can they portray romantic love when each of their protagonists has been taught, in Stowe's words, "to distrust her inclinations, and regard her feelings as traitors"? Though Stowe is more self-conscious than Warner about the conflicts between her narrative and theological purposes, neither author finds a way to neatly and completely resolve these conflicts. In my conclusion, I consider what this lack of resolution might signal and what possibilities my work here illuminates for the application of narrative theology to literary texts.
My analysis here relies on a foundational principle of narrative theology articulated by Stanley Hauerwas and Gregory L. Jones: "that rationality, methods of argument, and historical explanation have, at least to some extent, a fundamentally narrative form." In my reading of Stowe and Warner's novels, I suggest not only that some ideas may be fundamentally narrative in form, but that some ideas, such as Calvinist doctrine, may fundamentally resist narrative form. I ask, how can these authors unfold stories within a doctrinal framework that claims all events are predetermined? Further, how can they portray romantic love when each of their protagonists has been taught, in Stowe's words, "to distrust her inclinations, and regard her feelings as traitors"? Though Stowe is more self-conscious than Warner about the conflicts between her narrative and theological purposes, neither author finds a way to neatly and completely resolve these conflicts. In my conclusion, I consider what this lack of resolution might signal and what possibilities my work here illuminates for the application of narrative theology to literary texts.