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Brigham Young University

2014

Age of Enlightenment

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

"Oppressed With My Own Sensations": The Histories Of Some Of The Penitents And Principled Piety, Robin Runia Jan 2014

"Oppressed With My Own Sensations": The Histories Of Some Of The Penitents And Principled Piety, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Many scholars have observed the sentimentalization of the prostitute throughout the eighteenth century, and while this sentimentalization and its connection to the culture of sensibility have been compellingly theorized, the penitent prostitute's relationship to emotion, sensation, and piety has not been fully developed. The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House (1760) constructs an anxious equivalency between emotion and sensation, reflecting the vexed nature of sentimental discourse-the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between sensibility and sensuality. Examining this slippage reveals anxieties about women's abilities to accurately interpret and act upon the sensations of their bodies and their corresponding …


Of Broomsticks, The "Moderns;' And Self-Expression, Nathalie Zimpfer Jan 2014

Of Broomsticks, The "Moderns;' And Self-Expression, Nathalie Zimpfer

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Broomsticks have a history of making their way into Jonathan Swift's works. One might recall that such is the object of Peter's theologico-interpretive rantings in A Tale of a Tub, in which "after some pause the Brother so often mentioned for his Erudition, who was very skill'd in Criticisms, had found in a certain Author, which he said should be nameless, that the same Word which in the Will is called Fringe, does also signify Broom-stick." More conspicuously, said object is also at the heart of A Meditation upon a Broomstick, an amusing opuscule whose full title, A …


Sentimentality In The Service Of Methodism: John Wesley's Abridgment Of Henry Brooke's The Fool Of Quality ( 17 65-1770), Mary Peace Jan 2014

Sentimentality In The Service Of Methodism: John Wesley's Abridgment Of Henry Brooke's The Fool Of Quality ( 17 65-1770), Mary Peace

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This article examines the relationship between Methodist and sentimental discourses in the second half of the eighteenth century through the lens of John Wesley's abridgment of Henry Brooke's sentimental novel The Fool of Quality (1765-70). John Wesley's abridgment was published in 1781 under the title the History of Henry Earl of Moreland. My article is driven by the question of how a worldly Enlightenment text such as Brooke's Fool might have seemed ripe for the propagation of a Methodist theology that had abandoned the possibility of any true virtue existing in the world. In considering the relationship between Brooke's …


Melancholy, Medicine, And Religion In Early Modern England: Reading The Anatomy Of Melancholy: Book Review, Samara Anne Cahill Jan 2014

Melancholy, Medicine, And Religion In Early Modern England: Reading The Anatomy Of Melancholy: Book Review, Samara Anne Cahill

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading The Anatomy of Melancholy (2010), Mary Ann Lund challenges what she sees as the excesses, on one hand, of attempting to shoehorn Robert Burton's idiosyncratic text into a single genre and, on the other, of reader-response interpretations of the Anatomy. Lund tackles the Anatomy's notorious unwieldiness by treating the text as a guidebook intended to combat all types of melancholy for any type of reader. In other words, the excessiveness of the Anatomy's form suggests the generosity of an author and pastor who sought to help everyone, …


Milton In Context: Book Review, Angela Eward-Mangione Jan 2014

Milton In Context: Book Review, Angela Eward-Mangione

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

John Milton evades literary categorization more than any of his early modern contemporaries. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe primarily elicited fame through their contributions to English drama and poetry. John Donne is recognized as a master of both the sonnet and the sermon, though his love poetry remains a significant object of study as well. Milton, however, who wrote primarily as a poet and a pamphleteer, also worked as a government employee, actively engaging his social and political circumstances perhaps more than any other literary writer in early modern England. Milton's activism later led T. S. Eliot, when repenting his …


Theatre Of Crisis: The Performance Of Power In The Kingdom ·Of Ireland, 1662-1692: Book Review, Dave Mcginnis Jan 2014

Theatre Of Crisis: The Performance Of Power In The Kingdom ·Of Ireland, 1662-1692: Book Review, Dave Mcginnis

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Patrick Tuite's book Theatre of Crisis ostensibly details the political and social underpinnings of play development and performative aesthetics in Ireland between 1662 and 1692. From a purely historical point of view, this alone would merit the writing of the text as a point of serious study since Irish drama has traditionally lagged behind its English counterpart, even during the very years on which Tuite focuses. In pursuing this subject, Tuite has crafted a text that not only encapsulates the aesthetic preferences of the relevant era on Ireland's dominant stage at the time, the Smock Alley Theatre, but he has …


''A Dreadful Phenomenon At The Birches": Grace, Nature, And Industry In The Ministry And Writings Of John Fletcher Of Madeley, Peter S. Forsaith Jan 2014

''A Dreadful Phenomenon At The Birches": Grace, Nature, And Industry In The Ministry And Writings Of John Fletcher Of Madeley, Peter S. Forsaith

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

n the morning of Thursday, May 27, 1773, the evangelical Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire, the Reverend John Fletcher, went with throngs of other curious onlookers to view the dramatic scene of a landslip that had occurred in the early hours on the edge of his parish, at a location known locally as "the Birches." Meeting several of his parishioners there, he announced that he would return the following evening to preach a sermon on this "Dreadful Phenomenon:' He took for his text "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up ... …