The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Novel

Rachel Andrea Kent is an Independent Scholar in New Zealand.

Introduction: The Novel's Liturgical Origins, Pursuit of Presence, and Pained Aesthetics 1. The Laity's Triumph: Evolutions of Medieval Christology, Liturgy, and Lay Devotional Practice 2. The Wooden Pieta's Use and Inspiration in Late Medieval Beguine Communities 3. Housing for "Excess": Protestantism, Textuality, and the Novel's Late Medieval Capacities in a Post-Reformation Cosmos 4. Humor and Inconclusiveness: The Modern Novel's Experimental Origins and Hermeneutical Future 5. The Scandalous Divinity of "Madame Edwarda" and "My Mother": Georges Bataille's Atheist "theology" of the Incarnation, Community, and Ethics 6. Thomas Hardy's Phenomenology and Redemption for Michael Henchard through the Victorian Feminine 7. The Short Story as Presence Encounter: Eden, the Aging Body, and the Suckled Breast in Maupassant and Steinbeck's Literary Pietas Conclusion: The World Recreated: Lame Margareta of Magdeburg's Experimental Theology and Ethics