English Language and Literature Commons^™

'Singing Of Psalms Of Which I Could Never Get Enough': Labouring Class Religion And Poetry In The Cambuslang Revival Of 1741, Elspeth Jajdelska

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes and discusses the nature and uses of poetry by Scottish labouring-class participants in the revival at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, in 1741, drawing on the manuscript account of the revival collected by the parish minister, William McCulloch; setting the poems in the context of recent scholarly reconsideration of 17th and 18th century Scottish religious culture; relating the poems to the Scottish use of metrical psalms in kirk services and domestic devotions; and commenting in detail on poems by Alexander Bilsland and George Tassie, and a report on religious poetry reading by Ann Wylie.

One Big Thing: Suffering As The Path To New Life In Crime And Punishment, Kelly M. Kramer

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

After spending a whole semester reading and thinking about Dostoevsky, the main thing that has struck me about him is his treatment of the theme of suffering. Despite, and even through, his extremely complicated characters and events, he nevertheless focuses his novels, particularly Crime and Punishment, on presenting a nuanced yet unified picture of suffering. After a brief analysis of several of the relevant characters and plot points, his thoughts on what suffering does to and for the individual will be presented. In contrast to our culture’s almost idolization of suffering as an experience which gives one instant respect, …

Woodrow Wilson’S Ideological War: American Intervention In Russia, 1918-1920, Shane Hapner

Best Integrated Writing

Shane Hapner analyzes the effects of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination on American intervention in Russia from 1918-1920 in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course HST 4220: Soviet Union, taught by Dr. Seam Pollock at Wright State University.

Circular Thinking: An Original Analysis Of Lord Of The Flies, John Callon

Best Integrated Writing

John Callon examines traits of circular thinking and imagery in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 4560: Capstone in Integrated Language Arts Curriculum, taught by Dr. Nancy Mack at Wright State University.

Are The Main Institutional Changes That Created The “Business Man” Still Relevant?, Hayden Joblin

Best Integrated Writing

Hayden Joblin examines the forces driving the evolution of the modern business man and whether those still have relevance in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course EC 3190: Institutional Economics, taught by Dr. Hee Young Shin at Wright State University.

Identifying Genes Involved In Suppression Of Tumor Formation In The Planarian Schmidtea Mediterranea, Erin Dorsten

Best Integrated Writing

Erin Dorsten makes a proposal for a scientific study of experiments to identify genes involved in protecting an organism with negligible senescence from tumor formation in this piece written for the Integrated Writing course BIO 4020: Current Literature: Biology of Regeneration, taught by Labib Rouhana at Wright State University.

The Barb Report, Elizabeth Schoppelrei

Best Integrated Writing

Elizabeth Schoppelrei explores issues of sexuality, kindness, masculinity, discrimination, and respect in this short story written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 4830: Advanced Fiction Writing Seminar, taught by Dr. Erin Flanagan at Wright State University.

How To Recover From The Great Recession And Reduce The Government Debt, Hunter Cregger

Best Integrated Writing

Hunter Cregger proposes how to recover from the Great Recession of the 2000s and reduce government debt in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course EC 2050: Principles of Macroeconomics, taught by Dr. Hee Young Shin at Wright State University.

Inter-Tribal Disunity: An Analysis Of Inter-Tribal Conflict During The Black Hawk War Of 1832, Megan Bailey

Best Integrated Writing

Megan Bailey explores the effects of inter-tribal disunity and conflict on the Black Hawk War of 1832 in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course HST 3000: Introduction to Historical Analysis, taught by Dr. Noeleen McIlvenna at Wright State University.

Effects Of Caffeine And Vitamin E On Wisconsin Fast Plant, Sarah Ferguson

Best Integrated Writing

Sarah Ferguson examines the effects of caffeine and vitamin E on the growth of Wisconsin Fast Plant in this piece written for the Integrated Writing course BIO 3450: Concepts of Biology I for Early and Middle Childhood Education, taught by Mr. Len Kenyon at Wright State University.

Best Integrated Writing 2015 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

The Binding Of Abraham: Inverting The Akedah In Fail-Safe And Wargames, Hunter B. Dukes

Journal of Religion & Film

This article draws upon Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death to trace how two exemplars of atomic bomb cinema reinterpret the Binding of Isaac (Akedah). Released during the twin peaks of Cold War tension, Fail-Safe (1964) and WarGames (1983) invert the Akedah of Genesis 22. In both films, an act of sacrificial patricide accompanies or replaces the sacrifice of an Isaac-like son. When viewed in the context of Cold War cultural politics—events such as Norman Morrison’s Abrahamic self-immolation and Kent State’s rejection of George Segal’s sacrificial memorial— the inverted Akedah emerges as …

The Journey To Death: Elemental Imagery In The Works Of George Macdonald, Kaitlin M. Downing

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Abstract

Child death is a common topic in Victorian literature, with many writers focusing on the pain that comes with the loss of a child. George MacDonald also includes child death in his writing, but in a very different way; MacDonald’s works tend to portray death in a much more positive manner, straying away from the sadness surrounding a death and instead focusing on journeys of purification for the characters, with death simply as a transition into the next stage of life. MacDonald combines his religious beliefs with his interest in chemistry and alchemy to create these purifying journeys, each …

Sacred Or Profane Pleasures? Erotic Ceremonies In Eighteenth-Century French Libertine Fiction, Marine Ganofsky

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In France, the Age of Enlightenment was also an age of literary levity that saw a proliferation of erotic and pornographic narratives in which philosophy often fused with sexual gratification. The famous Choderlos de Lados with his Liaisons dangereuses (1782) and the infamous Marquis de Sade, along with authors such as Crebillon and Vivant Denon, epitomize this moment in French literary history, when erotic freedom paired with intellectual liberty. This "libertine" literature, as it is known, is characterized by its focus on fleshly desires and pleasures. The subject matter of libertine novels, short stories, poems, and paintings is the rendezvous …

Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

As the editor of an academic annual, I have the pleasure of interacting with scholars from across the United States and the world. While most of these interactions take place via e-mail, I feel as if I get to know RAE's contributors, in addition to their work, as I take a manuscript from submission to publication. Of course, some interactions are more personal than others. This was particularly true of my email exchanges with Adrianne Wadewitz, who died in a rock-climbing accident during the production of this volume. I am pleased to include her excellent essay on the ways eighteenth-century …

Front Matter

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Contents

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

"To Put The Soul In Motion": Connoisseurship As A Religious Discourse In The Writings Of Jonathan Richardson, Clare Haynes

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

It is only relatively recently that the significance of Jonathan Richardson's writings has been properly recognized. Carol Gibson-Wood, in a number of articles and a book, identified two main keys to Richardson's importance: first, Richardson adapted European art theory and "Englished" it for a British audience using a methodology heavily dependent on Locke. In doing so, he developed an approach to art that was distinctive in the European tradition. Second, Richardson, as both a writer and connoisseur, was more influential at home and abroad than was previously recognized. Indeed, Richardson was rightly acclaimed by Gibson-Wood as the "art theorist of …

Telescopes, Microscopes, And The Problem Of Evil, Christopher Fauske

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Astronomers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries found themselves for a while at the center of an alignment of scientific, cultural, and religious curiosity. Theirs was an endeavor embraced by significant segments of the established churches of England and Ireland who supported the founding of scientific societies in both countries and who drew on their network of contacts with continental Protestants to keep abreast of current developments abroad. In England, for example, works such as the Reverend William Derham's Astro-theology drew on mounting evidence that the universe might well be far larger than could be imagined to raise …

Providential Empiricism: Suffering And Shaping The Self In Eighteenth~Century British Children's Literature, Adrianne Wadewitz

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In "Praise for Creation and Providence" eighteenth-century Dissenting cleric Isaac Watts conveys God's encompassing presence-not only is he in heaven and hell, but he also inhabits (and owns) Earth and everything in it. This poem was reprinted for more than 150 years in Watts's Divine Songs: Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1775). A child reciting this poem is made keenly aware of how much he or she owes to God-soul, planet, and life. Watts emphasizes how one senses God's physical presence ("Beams of love:' "His Hand;' and "his Eye") with the body ("I stand or move" …

Recovering The Rhetorical Tradition: George Campbell's Sympathy And Its Augustinian Roots, Brian Fehler

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The year 1776 saw the production of two important documents of the Enlightenment: the US Constitution and George Campbell's The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Both documents were products of Enlightenment thought, and both demonstrate the conflicting attitudes in the era toward the rhetorical use of emotional appeals. Recent scholarship by John Witte examines the religious roots of the anti-emotionalist rhetoric expressed by Federalist politicians in the Constitutional era and in particular the influence of the Calvinist clergy of New England, with their "Puritan covenantal theory of ordered liberty and orderly pluralism:'1 Like the Federalists who were in charge of the …

Equal Portions Of Heavenly Fire: Mary Wollstonecraft And The Sexless Soul, Rachael Givens Johnson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

"This female philosopher indignantly rejects the idea of a sex in the soul, pronouncing the sensibility, timidity and tenderness of women, to be merely artificial refinements of character, introduced and fostered by men;' writes the appalled (and fictional) Hindu philosopher Shahcoolen in Benjamin Silliman's series The Letters of Shahcoolen (1802). Published not long after Mary Wollstonecraft's manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1796), Silliman's series dedicates four epistles to detailing the nature and influence of the "regenerating system of this female lunatic." Another detractor brands Wollstonecraft "an unsex'd female" in a poetic satire on the author's manifesto …

The Potential Convergence Of Religious And Secular Interests In Voltaire's Traite Sur La Tolerance, John C. O'Neal

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

When the Toulouse parliament condemned Jean Calas to death on March 9, 1762, and had him executed on the following day, Voltaire took up his pen to denounce what he saw as a brutal act of intolerance against a Protestant. Although Henry IV had signed the Edict of Nantes in 1598, guaranteeing freedom of conscience for all religions, Louis XIV revoked this edict in 1685 and claimed Catholicism as the one official religion of France. Already well known for his anticlericalism, Voltaire questioned a number of religious practices. But in his Traite sur la tolerance he does not reject religion …

Sacred Alliance? The Critical Assessment Of Revelation In Fichte And Kant, Tom Spencer

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Religion encountered a host of problems in the eighteenth century: the decline of Biblical authority, the rise of scientific skepticism, and an emerging spirit of human autonomy. Each of these developments diminished the function of religious institutions in public life, but this is not to say that religion lost its importance. Western modernity has not been able to ignore or replace Christianity- even if modernity generally cannot incorporate it. As Jonathan Sheehan observes, "secularization always is and always must be incomplete. Even as religion seems to vanish from politics and public culture, it never ceases to define the project of …

American Unitarians And The George B. English Controversy, Bradley Kime

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In late September 1813, a Harvard graduate named George Bethune English published an attack on the historical evidences of Christianity titled The Grounds of Christianity Examined, by Comparing the New Testament with the Old. English denied the relevance of miracles and argued that Jesus's claims to divine authority hinged solely on his fulfillment of Messianic prophecies. Only by twisting such prophecies beyond their obvious meanings, English argued, could Christians conceivably claim that Jesus fulfilled them. In their own day, the apostles and Evangelists did just that-misapplying the prophecies to Jesus either out of ignorance or dishonesty. In either case, …

Pentecost 1794: Robespierre's Religious Vision And The Fulfillment Of Time, Muriel Schmid

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Publications on the religious history of the French Revolution were in vogue during the second half of the nineteenth century. Several important essays published then are still regarded as landmarks for this topic, including those by Edgar Quinet (Le christianisme et la Revolution franraise, 1845), Francois-Alphonse Aulard (Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l'Btre Supreme, 1892), and Albert Mathiez (Les origines des cultes revolutionnaires, 1904). After this initial wave of interest, the religious paradigm of the French Revolution disappeared from scholarly discussions for more than half a century. Not until the …

The Elect Methodists: Calvinistic Methodism In England And Wales, 1735-1811: Book Review, Isabel Rivers

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The Calvinistic Methodists have received far less attention from historians than the Wesleyan or Arminian Methodists, and this book sets out to remedy that neglect. The imbalance is not surprising-Methodism of the Wesleyan kind became and remains a multimillion, worldwide movement, with many variants that retain the Wesleyan emphasis on holiness and salvation open to all, whereas eighteenth-century English Calvinistic Methodism is now represented only by the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, active on a small scale in England and Sierra Leone, while its Welsh co-movement became the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, now known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales. The …

David Hume: The Philosopher As Historian: Book Review, Richard Kleer

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Judging a book by its cover would give especially misleading results in this case. From its title, readers might expect a general introduction to Hume's scholarly work. Instead, they will get an account mainly of Hume the historian. The volume was originally commissioned as part of "a series of short books by historians writing about their favourite historians" (5). First published by Avon (in Britain) and St. Martin's (in the United States), it is now reprinted by Penguin and Yale. The rerelease may have a lot to do with the apparent popularity (judging by the many reviews, at least) of …

Imagining Methodism In Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, And The Borders Of The Self: Book Review, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

I n her sensitive and thoughtful afterword, Misty Anderson rehearses the investment of literary criticism in "restaging the opposition between a religious past and a secular modernity" (236). She makes clear how the discipline of literary studies has largely refused to acknowledge its own ideology of secularization. Quoting Michael Kauffman, Anderson offers her audience the following call to action: "Anyone constructing a narrative of secularization (even if finally to refute it) needs to evaluate certain ideas, truth claims, or values that may seem more or less spiritual, more or less 'religious"' (236). Following her own thorough consideration of the relationship …

Songs Without Music: The Hymnes Of Le Franc De Pompignan, Theodore E. D. Braun

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In the first edition of his Poesies sacrees (1751), Jean-Jacques Le Franc de Pompignan (1709-1784) published 40 poems in four books, each containing ten poems.1 These Poesies sacrees, or Sacred Poems, were to be printed three times in his Oeuvres choisies or Selected Works of 1753, 1754, and 1754-55. This modest collection was to be enlarged to 85 poems divided into five books of unequal length in its definitive form in the de luxe quarto edition of 1763 and finally as the first volume of his Oeuvres in 1784, which is the text I am using in this …