Principle and Propensity

"Bennett breaks new ground in comparative literature: Bildungsroman must henceforth imply not just secular self-development but the growth of God's image—or Bild—in fictional characters. She brings German Pietism, British Methodism, and the American Great Awakening to bear on novels by Goethe, Brontë, Dickens, Melville, and James. Well done!"—Richard E. Brantley, Alumni Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Florida, is the author of such books as Anglo-American Antiphony: The Late Romanticism of Tennyson and Emerson, Experience and Faith: The Late-Romantic Imagination of Emily Dickinson, and Emily Dickinson's Rich Conversation: Poetry, Philosophy, Science

"Kelsey L. Bennett's Principle and Propensity is an important contribution to our understanding of a central kind of fiction. What she's done, to put it most simply, is to ground five canonical novels about Bildung or self-formation—Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens's David Copperfield, Melville's Pierre, and James's The Portrait of a Lady—in the eighteenth-century evangelical conversion theologies of Nikolaus Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley. This, plus the equal time she gives to female and male protagonists, makes Principle and Propensity an original and genuinely illuminating work of criticism."—Thomas L. Jeffers, Marquette University

"Kelsey Bennett has written a wonderful book tracing the Bildungroman tradition from well-known European signposts to New World outposts and beyond. She engages the form in a lively conversation bringing together religious and intellectual traditions in a way that allows each to become something bigger than itself alone. Along the way, Principle and Propensity frees not only the Bildungsroman from stereotype, but the novel as a genre, making it OK for the novel to be transcendent and its readers inexhaustible."—Collin Meissner, University of Notre Dame

"I admire everything about [Kelsey Bennett's] book: the vigorous independence of thought, the clarity of the writing, the astuteness of the observations, the awareness of previous research judiciously handled, and the ability to apply a spiritual perspective in a way that makes for fresh and persuasive readings. Few scholars in our time are able to integrate religion in their criticism as a self-evidently vital force (Miriam Elizabeth Burstein is another) that formed the very basis for people's ideas about how to live their lives. The result is exhilarating and enlightening at the same time."—Marianne Thormaehlen, Lund University