Wishful Thinking: Loss and the Overcoming of Loss in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping
I argue that Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping addresses the problem of evil without ever seeming to do so directly. It does this by presenting moments of loss and suffering as catalysts for its narrator's imaginative "hypotheticals," constructions which reconsider the book...
| Published in: | Christianity & literature |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Johns Hopkins University Press
2023
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| In: |
Christianity & literature
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history NBC Doctrine of God |
| Further subjects: | B
Narrative
B Evil B Theodicy B conservation of energy B Marilynne Robinson B Forme |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | I argue that Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping addresses the problem of evil without ever seeming to do so directly. It does this by presenting moments of loss and suffering as catalysts for its narrator's imaginative "hypotheticals," constructions which reconsider the book's central losses in ways that are simultaneously fantastical and real. These formal constructions, which appear in the text as invitations or commands for acts of shared imagining, ground theodicy in material reality by framing that reality as always both a product of and a surpassing of loss. |
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| ISSN: | 2056-5666 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Christianity & literature
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/chy.2023.0003 |