Clashing Convictions: Science And Religion In American Fiction

Synopsis

Clashing Convictions: Science And Religion In American Fiction Is The First Study To Identify A Body Of Twentieth-century American Fiction That Represents The Increasing Tensions Experienced By People Of Christian Faith In Response To Darwinism, The Higher Biblical Criticism, And Modern Medicine. Delineating How These Works Dramatize Clashes Between Scientific And Conservative Protestant Understandings Of The World, Albert H. Tricomi Examines A Canon Of Ten Novels And One Iconic Play That Present A Cultural History Of Inner Turmoil As Well As Social Conflict. The Three Parts Of The Study Chart This Increasing Inner Turmoil, A Rising Secularist Ideology, And Finally A Fundamentalist Revival Among Alienated Biblical Literalists. Emergent Formations Of The Science-religion Binary: Sara Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor, Edward Eggleston's The Faith Doctor, Milton Scott's Henry Elwood, And Henry Adams's Esther -- The New Biblical Criticism And Darwinism: Harold Frederic's The Damnation Of Theron Ware -- An American Response To Darwinism: James Lane Allen's The Reign Of Law -- An Enlightenment Critique Of Religious Mania: W.d. Howells's The Leatherwood God -- A Research Scientist's Religion: Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith -- Satirizing Fundamentalist Education And Revivalist Preachers: Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry -- Transhistorical Parable: Jerome Lawrence And Robert E. Lee's Inherit The Wind -- Contemporary Perspectives: James Scott Bell's The Darwin Conspiracy And The Soul Of America. Albert H. Tricomi. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 199-218) And Index.