Faithful subjectivities : narrative portrayals of a Christian social imaginary : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Manawatū campus, New Zealand
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2025
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Massey University
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This thesis argues that the novel has provided a means of expressing Christian social imaginaries, or models of reality, through attempts to give narrative form to the identity and experience of individual believers that I term faithful subjectivity. Faithful subjectivity refers to the portrayal of individual self-understanding and behaviour that is rooted in the Christian metanarrative and participates simultaneously in the material and spiritual dimensions of its understanding of the world and the cosmos. This thesis thereby highlights the seeming paradox whereby writers turn to fiction to articulate and explore theological verities. It considers three novels from different literary periods, which each conform to different genre norms and are shaped by different theological traditions: John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra (1943), and Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004). My central contention is that these novelistic expressions of faithful subjectivity are each centred around distinctive organising metaphors: Bunyan famously presents faith as a journey in Pilgrim’s Progress, whereas Lewis frames it in terms of total war in Perelandra, and Robinson expresses faith as a matter of perception in Gilead. The analysis of each novel is situated in its historical and cultural contexts, as well as in light of its author’s theological dispositions, in order to better grasp the particular metaphor that it employs as a model of faithful subjectivity. I then consider the affordances and limitations of each structuring metaphor. This inquiry provides cultural and historical depth for broader conversations about the articulation of a Christian social imaginary alongside and in tension with the emergence of secular western subjectivity that has long been associated with the rise of the novel.