Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century Allegory

Harris, W. S. (William Shuler), 1865-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.3
Word count
346K words
Chapters
35

Tags

English Originals Religion Portrait GalleryLife PhilosophyJourney of FaithGood and EvilMoral CultivationMoral DilemmaSatirical StyleSymbolic NarrativeTwentieth CenturyReligious Allegory

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century Allegory by W. S. HarrisAuthor: Harris, W. S. (William Shuler), 1865-,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 2004

Editor's review

This work is a twentieth-century allegory built around two symbolic figures, Mr. World and Miss Church-Member, whose journeys are used to explore the tension between worldly life and religious conviction. The allegorical form gives abstract issues a tangible narrative vehicle, allowing readers to follow the characters' choices and encounters and to grasp the author's observations on the temper of the age and on personal conduct. As a public-domain e-book, its value lies not in timeliness but in offering a reading sample of an old-fashioned moral allegory: clear in structure and overt in moral meaning, it serves as an accessible introduction to the English allegorical tradition and to religious fiction. Readers need not look for complex plot reversals; a slower pace is more suitable, attending to the symbolic intent behind the characters' names and the arrangement of events, and understanding the author's concerns in light of the social context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For readers studying the allegorical genre, religious literature, or English public-domain texts, this book can serve as a light reference text.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the characters' names and identify the symbolic reference of Mr. World and Miss Church-Member respectively.
  2. After each chapter, summarize its moral theme in one sentence to grasp the overall structure.
  3. Read against the social context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to understand the author's concerns.
  4. For the English original, read slowly with a dictionary, paying attention to allegorical dialogue and argumentative passages.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35

FAQ

Is this book a novel or an argumentative essay? It is an allegorical work that carries moral and religious themes through character narrative; in form it is close to a novel, but its argumentative intent is clearly stronger than its plot development. Readers may treat it as a symbolic story rather than expecting a tightly realistic plot.
Can I understand it without a religious background? Yes. The characters' names and the arrangement of events are themselves suggestive; even without familiarity with specific religious background, one can grasp the basic tension between worldly temptation and steadfast faith. Unfamiliar terms can be looked up in notes or a dictionary.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for reading practice? As a public-domain English text from the early twentieth century, its sentence patterns and vocabulary bear the marks of the period. It is not overly difficult overall, but the argumentative passages are long. It is suitable for readers with some English foundation who are willing to read slowly as public-domain reading practice.

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About the author

Harris, W. S. (William Shuler), 1865- Author · American · 1865

W. S. Harris (William Shuler Harris, 1865–) was an American pastor and writer. His birth year is confirmed as 1865, while further details of his life are limited in publicly available sources. According to library records, his works Life in a Thousand Worlds and Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century Allegory carry religious and allegorical themes; the latter presents, in allegorical form, the conflict between faith and worldly life in the twentieth century, reflecting a pastor-author's tendency to convey moral and spiritual reflection through narrative. His religious and inspirational writings address general readers in accessible language, emphasizing exhortation and edification. Only two of his works are represented here, and Chinese-language translation and study of him remain sparse, so any judgment of his full body of work and influence must rest on further materials.