Here’s a fascinating thought I came across today.
It was a small step from Puritan journal writing to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Both are interior adventure stories that paved the way for character development in the novel. Edward Said, a leading Palestinian scholar, pointed out that “the novel is a specifically Christian form of writing. It presupposes a world that is incomplete, that is yearning for salvation, and moving toward it. By contrast… the world of Islam is a closed and complete world.”
— “A Praying Life,” by Paul E. Miller.
I have never heard or guessed this before, but it makes total sense, and is especially exemplified in some of the greatest novels ever written, such as Les Miserables, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov.
Win for Christian art.