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Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp
Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp
Faculty Publications
Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …
Irish Clergy And The Deist Controversy: Two Episodes In The Early British Enlightenment, Scott Breuninger
Irish Clergy And The Deist Controversy: Two Episodes In The Early British Enlightenment, Scott Breuninger
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
D uring the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an important question facing Anglican divines was the relationship between reason and religion. Initiated by the publication of John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), the controversy concerning deism raged across both sides of the Irish Sea and called into question the sanctity of revealed religion, forcing believers to articulate more "rational" defenses of Christianity. Closely associated with the problematic origins of the "English Enlightenment;' Toland's provocative tract valorized reason in matters of religion and drew heavily upon the ideas of natural philosophy. Although viciously attacked for its heretical tenets, Toland's position …