Obedience

A literary novel set during contemporary France and in an occupied village during the Second World War, Obedience intends to address research questions about the nature of belief, particularly the nature of uninformed and uneducated religious adherence as influenced by collective memory and personal experience. The novel draws on interdisciplinary research into collecting and modes of display; the relationship between storytelling and obsession, and the theological representation of sainthood during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The process of investigation drew together archival research in France with extensive site visiting. Original research focused on unearthing and examining local histories and investigating the nature of their presentation, in French and Occitan: many of these accounts were given as oral histories and recorded by the author for the first time. In its focus on the nature of collecting and the collector - articulated in one of the book's major characters - Obedience is closely linked to Yallop's critical publications, in particular, the cultural history of nineteenth-century collecting published as Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves: How the Victorians Collected the World.