"Fritz Oehlschlaeger's postliberal approach offers a potential way beyond the impasse of the bifurcation of conservative and liberal in the cultural wars of contemporary literary criticism without asking participants to relinquish their deeply held ethical convictions."--Brian D. Ingraffia, author of "Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God's Shadow"

Fritz Oehlschlaeger is Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is coeditor of Toward the Making of Thoreau’s Modern Reputation, coauthor of Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters, and editor of Old Southwest Humor from the Saint Louis Reveille, 1844–1850.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Literary Criticism and Christian Ethics in Service to One Another 9
2. Toward a Christian Ethics of Reading, or, Why We Cannot Be Done with Bartleby 49
3. The "Best Blessing of Existence”: "Conscious Worth” in Emma 83
4. Honor, Faithfulness, and Community in Anthony Trollope’s The Warden and He Knew What Was Right 126
5. The "Very Temple of Authorised Love”: Henry James and The Portrait of a Lady 169
6. A Light That Has Been There from the Beginning: Stephen Crane and the Gospel of John 212
Afterword: Postliberal Christian Scholarship: An Engagement with Rorty and Stout 251
Notes 271
Bibliography 297
Index 307