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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Review: "Of Africa", Aaron Eastley
Review: "Of Africa", Aaron Eastley
Faculty Publications
“A truly illuminating exploration of Africa,” suggests Wole Soyinka in the preface of his new book, Of Africa, “has yet to take place.” Soyinka is not writing here of a physical exploration, of course, but of a humanistic or spiritual one. This, at the root, is what the eight essays that comprise Of Africa urge readers to consider: ways in which Africa can lead the world forward into “a deeply craved Age of Universal Understanding.” In Soyinka’s estimation Africa today is very nearly as misapprehended and undervalued by the world at large as ever it was in the past. But …
P. J. Marshall: The British Discovery Of Hinduism In The Eighteenth Century: Book Review, Michael Austin
P. J. Marshall: The British Discovery Of Hinduism In The Eighteenth Century: Book Review, Michael Austin
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
The format of this reissued book deserves some commentary. Originally published in 1970, these reprints of primary texts from the second half of the eighteenth century are now available in a digitally printed version. This publication format takes advantage of new digital printing technologies that can produce attractive, bound volumes of older books-often indistinguishable from the original edition-in print runs as small as a single copy. This publication medium is an exciting innovation for scholars, ultimately eliminating out-of-print books by making any book available, on demand, to anyone who wants to purchase it.
Patrick Muller: Latitudinarianism And Didacticism In Eighteenth~ Century Literature: Moral Theology In Fielding, Sterne, And Goldsmith: Book Review, Christopher J. Fauske
Patrick Muller: Latitudinarianism And Didacticism In Eighteenth~ Century Literature: Moral Theology In Fielding, Sterne, And Goldsmith: Book Review, Christopher J. Fauske
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Latitudinarianism is one of those terms modern authors use when discussing disputes within the eighteenth-century Church of England, often without providing a definition of the term itself. Liberal and conservative, Whig and Tory, are unhelpful in identifying a person's place on a religious spectrum that was not necessarily political. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy are germane only when considering debates that crossed denominational lines-or, at the very least, threatened to cause schism. So scholars often use the term "latitudinarian" by default.
Joris Van Eijnatten: Preaching, Sermon, And Cultural Change In The Long Eighteenth Century: Book Review, Anna Battigelli
Joris Van Eijnatten: Preaching, Sermon, And Cultural Change In The Long Eighteenth Century: Book Review, Anna Battigelli
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
For decades, the eighteenth-century sermon has fallen into scholarly neglect, despite its role as the foremost performance of public self-definition. The sermon provides insight into the experience of daily life, evolving national self-definitions, and changing cultural trends. Indeed, it is difficult to absorb the complexity and paradoxes of the period known as the Enlightenment apart from the kinds of sermons it produced. The essays in this volume focus on the eighteenth century and cover all of Europe, casting some needed light on the sermon's theological foundations, its transformation throughout the course of the eighteenth century, its content, and, most interesting, …
Phillip C. Almond Heaven And Hell In Enlightenment England: Book Review, Ryan K. France
Phillip C. Almond Heaven And Hell In Enlightenment England: Book Review, Ryan K. France
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
P hilip C. Almond examines the changing concepts of heaven and hell, and the nature of the human soul, as interpreted in England between the second half of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. This book, originally published in 1994, was greatly influenced by two magisterial studies: Daniel P. Walker's The Decline of Hell (Chicago, 1964) and Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford, 1997), though unfortunately Almond's primary points of departure and contributions are not especially clear. The final product will appeal to a more narrow audience than the title would suggest, but Almond presents …
Kathryn Duncan, Editor Religion In The Age Of Reason: A Transatlantic Study Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Book Review, David B. Paxman
Kathryn Duncan, Editor Religion In The Age Of Reason: A Transatlantic Study Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Book Review, David B. Paxman
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
When asked what would follow race, class, and gender as the new "center of intellectual energy in the academy:' Stanley Fish answered, "religion" (ix). Kathryn Duncan's collection of twelve essays in Religion in the Age of Reason: A Transatlantic Study of the Long Eighteenth Century turns our attention in that direction and, in so doing, demonstrates why religion merits greater attention. Six of the twelve essays have appeared in an issue of AMS's Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, volume 4, edited by Duncan.
Gil Skidmore, Editor Strength In Weakness: Writings Of Eighteenth~ Century Quaker Women: Book Review, Laura Miller
Gil Skidmore, Editor Strength In Weakness: Writings Of Eighteenth~ Century Quaker Women: Book Review, Laura Miller
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
This anthology showcases the experience of an underrepresented group of women: eighteenth-century Quakers. This group has received comparatively little critical attention in contrast to Quaker women of the seventeenth century; Skidmore's anthology helps to fill this void. Skidmore's edition begins with an introductory chapter that helps to define Quakerisms origins, the value of testimony, and the comparative equality of women who participated in a faith that acknowledged "the 'priesthood of all believers'" (2). The eight women whose writings Skidmore anthologizes have lives full of mobility and agency and were, these accounts imply, respected members of their communities. Following is a …
Jason E. Vickers Wesley: A Guide For The Perplexed: Book Review, Richard P. Heitzenrater
Jason E. Vickers Wesley: A Guide For The Perplexed: Book Review, Richard P. Heitzenrater
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Attempts to analyze John Wesley seriously will sooner or later (probably sooner) result in growing perplexity in the minds of the analysts. There are two main reasons for their consternation. First, difficulties naturally arise from trying to understand a person who was a major national figure during much of his life over two centuries ago. Wesley's was a long life marked by growth, development, change, arguments against opponents from all sides (in different ways at different times and places), and his status as legend in his own day-a reputation that was, in part, of his own doing. Second, the variety …
Jeffrey D. Burson The Rise And Fall Of Theological Enlightenment: Book Review, Kevin L. Cope
Jeffrey D. Burson The Rise And Fall Of Theological Enlightenment: Book Review, Kevin L. Cope
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
A peculiar artifact of many decades of materialist historical study is the reinforcement of a highly imaginary, cinematic envisioning of the French eighteenth century. Eager to debunk, demythologize, or otherwise demote anything even remotely religious, historians relish pictures of the French Enlightenment and French Revolution worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille or a D. W Griffith. In the rendering of continental Enlightenment now favored among fashion-forward academic professionals, the poor, the intellectual, the oppressed, and the angry increase in number and fervor while the overfed monks, the ermine-draped clerics, and the impudent aristocrats gobble up every last resource. Then, in …
Fellow~Feeling And The Moral Life: Book Review, Patrick Mello
Fellow~Feeling And The Moral Life: Book Review, Patrick Mello
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
In his Fellow-Feeling and the Moral Life, Joseph Duke Filonowicz challenges readers to modify the premises underlying much moral philosophy since Kant by considering with open minds whether human beings possess an innate moral sense. Despite the systematic logical satisfaction achieved by ethical rationalism, Filonowicz argues that the dogged adherence to reason reduces morality to a mere set of anemic thought-experiments having little to do with the actions undertaken by people living emotionally complex lives. Modifying rationalism, Filonowicz finds inspiration from a notion expressed in Henry Miller's Black Spring, that "what is not in the open streets is …
Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith Of America's Founding Fathers: Book Review, Kevin L. Cope
Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith Of America's Founding Fathers: Book Review, Kevin L. Cope
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Many years ago, Walter Jackson Bate was asked by a student in a general education class what he thought about "Coleridge, you know, his opium use:' Jack Bate, ever the master of the comically surly rebuttal, retorted, "What do you want me to say, well, naughty naughty?" So it is with regard to that band of culturally ambitious yet permanently rusticated idealists and ideologues who once traded under the name "the founding fathers of America:' Having lived for decades, even centuries, atop the plinths and amid the applause created by Parson Weems, textbook authors, documentary directors, and special event producers, …
Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice Of The Enlightenment: Book Review, Robert K. Lapp
Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice Of The Enlightenment: Book Review, Robert K. Lapp
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
The subtitle of this long-awaited, monumental biography of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment, captures both McCarthy's achievement as a scholarly biographer and the vital relevance of Barbauld's wide-ranging and lucid articulations of Enlightenment values in Britain. McCarthy's twenty years of meticulous scholarship have literally brought to revisionary light what we need to know about a woman of letters uniquely positioned to propagate the impulses of the Enlightenment in education, literature, political debate, and religion. As McCarthy points out in his preface, "[Barbauld's] story is part of the story of Protestant Dissent's campaign for equal political rights, and …
Art And Religion In Eighteenth~Century Europe: Book Review, Karen Bryant
Art And Religion In Eighteenth~Century Europe: Book Review, Karen Bryant
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
With publications such as The French Revolution 1789-1804: Liberty, Authority and the Search for Stability (Palgrave, 2004), Christianity in Revolutionary Europe, 1760-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), Anticlericalism in Britain from the Reformation to the First World War (Sutton, 2000), Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804 (Macmillan, 2000), and now Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe (2009, Reaktion), Nigel Aston has established himself as an erudite sleuth bent on uncovering in meticulous detail those subjects within eighteenth-century religious scholarship that hitherto have been either ignored or given short shrift. Aston does not disappoint with his latest book in which he …
Peripheral Wonders: Nature, Knowledge, And Enlightenment In The Eighteenth~Century Orinoco: Book Review, Laura Miller
Peripheral Wonders: Nature, Knowledge, And Enlightenment In The Eighteenth~Century Orinoco: Book Review, Laura Miller
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Margaret R. Ewalt's Peripheral Wonders: Nature, Knowledge, and Enlightenment in the Eighteenth-Century Orinoco responds to several essential topics in eighteenth-century studies, including the connections between scientific work and socioeconomic forces, the interpenetration of colonial powers and Amerindian populations, the recasting of the Enlightenment, and the variable uses of rhetoric to address print audiences. Peripheral Wonders centers on Jesuit missionary Joseph Gumilla's El Orinoco ilustrado ( 17 41, 17 45), a natural history that offers a narrative in which Catholicism and scientific inquiry mutually engage. In El Orinoco ilustrado, natural history remains informed by religious beliefs as well as local …
Enlightenment And Modernity: The English Deists And Reform: Book Review, Scott Breuninger
Enlightenment And Modernity: The English Deists And Reform: Book Review, Scott Breuninger
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
The traditional view of the Enlightenment has often dismissed the study of religion as peripheral to a larger narrative of progress that describes the triumph of reason and liberty over superstition and autocracy. Recent work has begun to correct this impression, as scholars have examined the nature and extent of a "religious Enlightenment" ( or more appropriately "Enlightenments") that developed during the long eighteenth century. Although innovations in political and philosophical thought during this period were relatively cosmopolitan, the religious dimension of the Enlightenment typically reflected national concerns and disputes. This was especially true in England, where the loosely defined …
Walls And Vaults: A Natural Science Of Morals (Virtue Ethics According To David Hume): Book Review, Christopher Fauske
Walls And Vaults: A Natural Science Of Morals (Virtue Ethics According To David Hume): Book Review, Christopher Fauske
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
D avid Hume's place among intellectuals of the eighteenth century is at least in part based on the happy circumstance of when he wrote. Hume had the advantage of being in the position to begin to systematize, summarize, and develop the remarkable progress and theorizing that had characterized the period prior to his own contributions. Hume's work stretched from a time in which conjecture and exploration were the hallmark of intellectual activity to one in which it became possible-necessary even-to take stock of what had transpired over the preceding decades.
Trauma And Transformation: The Political Progress Of John Bunyan: Book Review, Jeffrey Galbraith
Trauma And Transformation: The Political Progress Of John Bunyan: Book Review, Jeffrey Galbraith
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
In these papers from the Third Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, the life and writings of John Bunyan assume a less tidy shape than appears in standard biographies. Bunyan braved the consequences of defying the Act of Uniformity of 1662, yet Trauma and Transformation does not view the Dissenting author as possessing an identity galvanized by persecution. Nor, on the other hand, do the essays reduce Bunyan's religious sensitivity to a psychological disorder. Rather, the contributors to this collection work to excavate the gaps in the existing record of Bunyan's life. Notably, they address Bunyan's silence concerning …
Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher, And Theologian: Book Review, Michael Austin
Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher, And Theologian: Book Review, Michael Austin
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
I n two hundred or so published works between 17 60 and his death in 1804, Joseph Priestley established himself as an important voice in more than a half a dozen important fields. He was a grammarian and pedagogue, philosopher and political theorist, historian, world famous scientist who played a major part in the discovery of oxygen, and important figure in the development of Unitarianism. Covering all of this in a single introductory volume is a big job, and Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian does it well, providing a much needed introduction to the thought of one of the …
A Companion To Hume: Book Review, Eva Dadlez
A Companion To Hume: Book Review, Eva Dadlez
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Blackwell's fortieth Companion to Philosophy is a splendid and long-overdue Companion to Hume, expertly pulled together by Elizabeth Radcliffe, a former editor of the journal Hume Studies. Although the Blackwell Companions are promoted as a student reference series, this particular volume is clearly of considerable value to serious scholars as well and probably accessible only to advanced students with a strong philosophical background.
Religion, Reform, And Modernity In The Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker And The Church Of England: Book Review, Bob Tennant
Religion, Reform, And Modernity In The Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker And The Church Of England: Book Review, Bob Tennant
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Thomas Secker was born in 1693 into a Dissenting family, joined the Church of England in his early twenties, and ultimately served as Archbishop of Canterbury, from 1758 until his death in 1768-the last one to head the communion in an undivided Anglophone political community. Robert Ingram has produced an impressively organized account of his personal and, especially public, life with an unprecedented breadth of research and reading. He has also done it with an obvious, indeed, self-confessed, enthusiasm for his subject and in a free-flowing (though sometimes disconcertingly breezy) style that is a pleasure to read, although the prose …
Monarchy And Religion: The Transformation Of The Royal Culture In Eighteenth-Century Europe: Book Review, Kathleen E. Urda
Monarchy And Religion: The Transformation Of The Royal Culture In Eighteenth-Century Europe: Book Review, Kathleen E. Urda
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Originating with a 2002 international conference given by the German Historical Institute London, this fine collection of essays edited by Michael Schaich seeks to challenge and complicate an enduring master narrative about the eighteenth century "as a period of desacralization of monarchy". Schaich states in his introduction that Monarchy and Religion is not a "revisionist" attempt to suggest that religion remained the only or even the main source of monarchy's power and influence in the eighteenth century. Rather, Schaich excellently delineates gaps that have existed for far too long in the portrayal of the European monarchy. He argues in his …