The Idea of the Symbol

The term 'symbol' is so widely used that it inevitably acquires contradictory meanings. In this interdisciplinary study of some nineteenth-century writers, Sister Mary Jadwiga has pinpointed and disentangled some of the imprecisions of its usage and the questions they raise. Are symbols distinct from their referents, or are the two inherently, and not only conventionally connected? How do symbols suggest something beyond themselves? What kind of knowledge do symbols give? The examination of the idea of symbol in the work of Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, Dean Inge, George Tyrrell and George MacDonald shows how inconsistencies of usage, even within the work of one writer, are integral to different and imprecise thinking on such important questions as the relationship between the individual and the universal, Christianity and history, truth and analogy. This book will be of value to those interested in philosophy, history of language and students of literature, history and theology.