What, if any, is the relationship between Charles Dickens and the decorative arts? Between Henry James and Art Nouveau? Between the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the paintings of the Impressionists? Recent trends in scholarship have begun to reassess the assumption that the arts of painting and literature are too fundamentally disparate to permit a fruitful comparison between the two. In Victorian Contexts, Murray Roston puts that assumption to rest with imaginative and refreshing essays on the similarities and shared themes of the literature, painting, architecture, and crafts of the nineteenth century. Explaining the value of such an intertextual approach, he argues that in every generation there is a central complex of inherited assumptions and urgent contemporary concerns to which each creative artist responds in his or her individual way. Eminently readable, Victorian Contexts is accessible to general readers as well as scholars of literature, the visual arts, and nineteenth-century culture.
Murray Roston is Professor of English at Bar-Ilan University, Israel and has been a visiting professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, Stanford University, and the University of Virginia. He is also the author of Victorian Contexts: Literature and the Visual Arts (NYU).
""Bad Pastors" raises all the good questions and provides many hypothetical answers, and for these reasons alone it should be read by all sociologists of religion with an interest in wrongdoings." -"Sociology of Religion", "Goes far beyond the 'bad apple' theory of clergy malfeasance. In this book sensitive, tough-minded sociologists ask why notorious predators have been able to exploit religious institutions and use them to cover up their violations. The clear-headed contributors not only communicate effectively with a wide audience, but also bring years of hard-won experience and training to help the rest of us understand how the misuse of clergy power arose and operates. Institutions that train professionals--seminaries, law schools, medical schools, academic centers--could profit considerably from the wisdom and implied recommendations found in these weighty chapters."-J. E. Barnhart, author of "The Study of Religion and Its Meaning" "This book is extremely valuable. Shupe et al. have done an excellent job...highly recommended; it is a must-read." -"Criminal Justice Review",
