Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 4 - Vegetarianism as Religion

  • Theophilus Savvas, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Vegetarianism and Veganism in Literature from the Ancients to the Twenty-First Century
    Published online:
    30 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024, pp 104-136

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 highlights the way in which vegetarianism may be understood as an alternative (to) religion. The first part of the chapter suggests that after 1962 vegetarianism is central to the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and that no proper understanding of that fiction can be obtained without first understanding Singer’s vegetarian epistemology. This stands in contrast to the traditional view which is that Singer’s vegetarianism was only a kind of sublimation of Jewish dietary laws. The second part of the chapter focuses on Graham Greene’s The Comedians, arguing that the vegetarianism of Mr and Mrs Smith, which appears at first to be only comic relief, comes to take on much greater significance since it emerges as a powerful kind of surrogate faith – the kind of faith that Brown, the narrator, has lost.