In this video I give an overview of my dissertation, The Quest for a Novelistic Jesus: Literary Relationships with Jesus in Victorian Realism. I explain how the stories embedded in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theology lead to portrayals of Jesus and Jesus-imitators in the novel and how these characterizations help us better understand a significant tension within realism. I argue that Jesus characters highlight how the novel’s descriptions of reality often interrupt the reader’s experience of reality within the novel, an experience created through sympathetic relationships between readers and characters. Novelists’ consequent attempts to foster sympathy between readers and Jesus-characters drive experimentation within the novel that ends up shaping the popular perception of Jesus in Victorian culture, transforming Jesus from an ascended God-figure to a revolutionary human being.
Stay-tuned for a few more video’s expounding the individual chapters of my dissertation.
Jessica Ann Hughes