Download or read book Dickens, Manzoni, Zola, and James written by Ruth Newton and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Christianity was diluted and demythologized, 19th century novelists of moral passion yielded to conventions of history and society in a vain effort to preserve spiritual powers. Dickens, Manzoni, Zola and James in grand refusals of mediation, paradoxically preserved the autonomy of the spirit by summoning it down into the very centre of history. The dynamic attraction of the greatest novels by these four authors originates precisely from an unresolvable tension between the spirit and the world.