Three Faces of Saul
A fascinating intertextual study of the classic biblical tragedy of Saul, the first king of Israel, as first narrated in biblical narrative and later reworked in Lamartine's drama Saul: Tragédie and Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Plot and characterization are each explored in detail in this study, and in each of the narrations the hero's tragic fate emerges both as the result of a character flaw and also as a consequence of the ambivalent role of the deity, showing a double...
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Acknowledgments9Abbreviations10Introduction11Face ISaul in 1 SamuelCh. 1To Every Bad There is a Worse: the Mechanics of Biblical Tragedy36Overview of the Tragic Vision40The Father-Son Collision44Tragic Mechanics53Ch. 2An Unsympathetic First Cause: Divine Ambivalence in Biblical Tragedy77Overview of Divine Ambivalence77Divine Agency83Summary106The Problem of Evil107Face IISaul in Lamartine's SaulCh. 3If All Were Only Vanity: Striving After the Biblical Plot114Plot118Characterization130Ch. 4Once Victim, Always Victim: Blind Insanity and Conflict with the Divine148Thematic Schemes and Stylistic Devices149The Role of God162Face IIIHenchard in Hardy's The Mayor of CasterbridgeCh. 5That No Man Remember Me: The Character of Hardy's Tragic Vision180The Present State of Scholarship181Voltaire188Character194Ch. 6The Solid, Inexorable Hand of Indifference: Ambivalence and Absence217Social History218Fate and Chance230Ch. 7Conclusion251Summary of Main Findings257Methodological Considerations258Limitations of this Approach and Areas for Further Research260Bibliography265Index of References271Index of Authors275
