Poetics and Narrative

Abstract

I want to start with a quotation from Hans Frei’s stimulating and seminal book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. Comparing the development of prose fiction and biblical criticism in England and Germany during the eighteenth century, he notes that:

In England, where a serious body of realistic narrative literature and a certain amount of criticism of the literature was building up, there arose no corresponding cumulative tradition of criticism of the biblical writings, and that included no narrative interpretation of them. In Germany, on the other hand, where a body of critical analysis as well as general hermeneutics of the biblical writings built up rapidly in the latter half of the eighteenth century, there was no simultaneous development of realistic prose narrative and its critical appraisal.¹