First question: Carpenter's analysis of prophetic and apocalyptic literature is primarily confined to the period ending in the 1870s. I'm interested, however, in how fin de siècle anxieties might have played into nineteenth-century prophetics. I'm thinking specifically of Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan, in which Satan appears in 1890s London disguised as a dandy. Here we have the intersection of two different -- though obviously related -- fears: the apocalypse and the dandy. How can we relate fin de siècle anxieties (represented often by the dandy) to prophetic writing in the nineteenth century?
Second question: Thinking about the domestic novel, I am wondering whether the domestic novel might have signified its own sort of apocalypse. The domestic novel is founded on the idea of the domestic sphere as a haven, keeping the characters separate and protected from a public sphere that has become progressively corrupt and dangerous. This implies that the characters need protection from something dangerous outside of the home: isn't this setup fraught with ideas of apocalypse?
Third question: The narrative of the "forbidden book" was prevalent generally in nineteenth-century writing and more specifically in female nineteenth-century writing. Taking into consideration the technique of bracketing parts of the Bible (and thinking about bracketing as a form of highlighting) are there any narratives that deal with women's responses to these bracketed sections?
Fourth question: Addressing the relationship between serialization and typological readings, Carpenter writes, "Rather than encountering the Old Testament as offering types and figures of the New, they might have read it as they would a novel, reflecting on its characters and stories, and discoursing on the strange 'customs' described?" (44). Would serialized publication and reading have irreparably damaged the reader's ability to read the Bible in a typological fashion, or would the nature of the typological reading have simply become less literal?
Last modified 4 October 2004