THE PROPHETIC VOICE IN MODERN FICTION

by William R. Mueller ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1959

Here is a book of more than ordinary significance. The author, Dr. William R. Mueller, believes that the best of the ""twentieth century novelists may with propriety lay claim to the title of latter-day prophets, for the health, or lack thereof, of our civilization is most accurately bodied forth in their works, just as the pulse of ancient Israel was most sensitively examined and expressed by the Old Testament prophets."" With this hope and expectation, Dr. Mueller gives us a thematic study of six novels by James Joyce and A Portrait of the Artist; Albert Camus The Fall; Franz Kafka, The Trial; William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter; and Ignazio Silone, A Handful of Blackberries. ""If much of that literature would point to the absence of man's encounter with God, it would also point to the human situation which makes such an encounter so rare."" Nonetheless, these writers do deal with such basic religious problems as vocation, sin, judgment and salvation, suffering and love. It is such a book as will send the reader back to these novels for deeper understanding if he has read them once, or to read them for the first time with sharpened awareness which will permit him to hear the prophetic voices so well heard and described by Dr. Mueller, of the Department of English, Women's College, University of North Carolina.

Pub Date: May 20, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Association Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION