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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 …

Daniel Brewer: The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth, Century French Thought: Book Review, Charles T. Wolfe, Veronica Ganora

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Daniel Brewer's study of the French Enlightenment-its construction, its self-fashioning, and its subsequent reconstruction in a series of national memorial performancesis heavily overladen with a kind of "poetics of ruins:' Ruins and monuments are everywhere here, in an almost dialectical relation: ''Alas, more beautiful is the debris of a beautiful palace;' exclaims Victor Hugo (quoted p. 186), and Chapter 9, which is explicitly devoted to the theme of ruins, refers to some of the classical Enlightenment narratives of progress, from Condorcet to Turgot, as self-consciously focused on the problem of "building on ruins:' The reference to the past in the …

Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Perhaps it would not be inappropriate to begin with a confession. This is, after all, an annual that focuses on religious topics. In a publication that aims for disciplinary breadth, the majority of the articles in this volume address literary topics. Nonetheless, I do not mean for this confession to be taken as an apology. On the contrary. While RAE publishes representative scholarship from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, the overall quality and coverage of the essays included here recommend this volume to scholars and students of the Enlightenment, no matter their disciplinary background. These essays cover a range …

The Enlightenment Tradition Of Hume And Smith In Austen: Windows To Understanding, Nicole Coonradt

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith notes the importance of "little department[s]"-those smaller circles of social contact: "By Nature the events which immediately affect that little department in which we ourselves have some little management and directions, which immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our country, are the events which interest us the most, and which chiefly excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows:' Alasdair MacIntyre would agree with this idea of one's sphere of influence, especially in the works of Jane Austen. Clearly, this concern with self, others, and country might …

Index

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

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Front Matter

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Daniella Kostroun And Lisa Vollendorf, Editors Women, Religion, And The Atlantic World (1600-1800): Book Review, Robin Runia

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

This recent collection of essays promises to transcend the Old vs. New World, Catholic vs. Protestant, and European vs. indigenous dichotomies that have dominated the emerging field of Atlantic studies. Edited by Daniella Kostroun and Lisa Vollendorf and drawing from a colloquium sponsored by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600-1800)explores how religion and spirituality shaped local politics, economics, gender, and race in Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America. The alternative directions described and modeled in the volume all assume a women's and …

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 …

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.

Facing The Future With The Shield Of Aeneas: Virgil And The Testing Of Dryden's Catholic Faith In The 1690s, John J. Burke Jr.

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The shield of Aeneas has always had a sense of mystery about it. His shield, like that of Achilles in the Iliad, is not merely a physical object designed to protect him from crippling wounds or death while in battle; oddly, it is also a work of art. Moreover, it is a work of art that is supernatural in origin, fashioned in this instance by the Roman god Vulcan and presented to the Trojan exile Aeneas by his goddess mother, Venus, in book 8 of Virgil's Aeneid. There have been countless discussions of what we are to make …

Anti~Catholicism And The Gothic Imaginary: The Historical And Literary Contexts, Diane Long Hoeveler

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

General historical consensus (long in the grip of Whig assumptions) has frequently proclaimed that religion during the Enlightenment period was no longer the highly contentious issue that it had been since the reformation in England. By the mid-eighteenth century, the long siege of fighting and dying over religious beliefs was, in fact, believed to be safely in the past as an elite class and an enlightened bourgeoisie embraced the brave new world of rationalism. This upper crust relegated religious disputes to a much earlier European culture that had been prone to such primitive, superstitious, and irrational behaviors and beliefs. The …

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, …

Religion, Evolution, And Sensibility: Vico And Hume On The History Of Religion, Horace L. Fairlamb

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Whereas Eastern religions are typically defined by their practices, Western religions are identified by their theological histories, beginning with the covenant between God and Abraham. These theological histories chart a cultural progress marked by divine intrusions or revelations. In contrast, modern secular histories suggest that nature, humanity, and knowledge are progressing without the need for supernatural intervention. Moreover, while traditional religions typically claimed that ultimate truth had already been revealed, Enlightenment progressivism holds that truth is not yet absolutely known, that knowledge is still evolving, and that further progress in truth depends only on natural reason. With the coming of …

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.

Wherein Lies Virtue? Secular Matters And Godly Matters In The Works Of Sarah Fielding, Mary Ann Rooks

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Like many writers of the eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding frequently proclaims that the function of her narratives, and of fiction in general, is to inculcate virtue through entertaining storytelling; in her novels she forthrightly intends, as she says in the introduction to The Cry, to "entertain and instruct:' In her prefatory and other critical materials, she tends to draw from an arsenal of commonly referenced classical poets and early modern philosophers, essayists, and literary masters to illustrate and defend her moral purpose. Indeed, one might be led to believe, based solely on reading the ancillary, nonfiction expressions surrounding Fielding's …

Robert D. Cornwall And William Gibson, Editors: Religion, Politics, And Dissent, 1660-1832: Essays In Honour Of James E. Bradley: Book Review, Dustin D. Stewart

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

I n reviewing a Festschrift, one shouldn't lose sight of the volume and focus overmuch on the work of its dedicatee. The success of a party is the responsibility of the hosts rather than the guest of honor. Yet for a certain kind of honoree one may well expect a certain kind of party, so the relationship between the honored work and the honoring work demands attention. The editors of Religion, Politics and Dissentbegin their book by depicting James E. Bradley, whose sixty-fifth birthday occasioned the collection, as an opponent of what they call "the dominant historical position" …

Full Issue

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

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Beautifully Damned: Imagination, Revelation, And Exile In Coleridge's "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" And Byron's Cain: A Mystery, Matt Slykhuis

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Abrief survey of the eighteenth-century debates regarding the compatibility of reason and religion reveals the development of two powerful-and polarized-theological trends. The first is what I refer to as the "de-supernaturalization" of Christianity. This movement was evinced among rationalists who desired to remain connected to England's religious past and to retain the unifying influence of their society's most vital "myth" (i.e., Christianity) but who also felt a strong impetus to rid the faith of its "irrational" supernatural elements (e.g., belief in miracles, the soul, and the inspiration of Scripture). The second trend, what I call "re-supernaturalization;' occurred later in the …

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.

Front Matter

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Volume 2 of Religion in the Age of Enlightenment brings together the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars from a variety of fields of study and helps to solidify RAE's thematic and methodological scope. Looked at collectively, their work spans more than a century, from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, and the varied topics and approaches demonstrate the rich possibilities for the study of religion during the Enlightenment.

Allegiance, Sympathy, And History: The Catholic Loyalties Of Alexander Pope, Steven Stryer

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The charges leveled by John Dennis against the young author of An Essay on Criticism are characteristically hyperbolic: Alexander Pope is disparaged as a historical partisan whose loyalties (to the Catholics James II and his son the Pretender) and antipathies (to the Protestants Charles II and William III) are determined entirely by his allegiance to the Church of Rome. Dennis claims that in comparing the classical writers to absolute monarchs, Pope had hinted his approval of James's suspension of the operation of the penal laws against Catholics in defiance of Parliament-in contrast with his explicit rejection later in the poem …

"Improving The Present Moment": John Wesley's Use Of The Arminian Magazine In Raising Early Methodist Awareness And Understanding Of National Issues (January 1778-February 1791), Barbara Prosser

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In March 1747, when defending the Methodist practice of lay preaching, John Wesley announced: "I am not careful for what may be an hundred years hence. He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment:'' The same thought was apparent thirty years later when counseling Ann Bolton: "Whatever our past experience has been, we are now more or less acceptable to God as we more or less improve the present moment."

"If God ... See Fit To Call You Out": "Public" And "Private" In The Writings Of Methodist Women, 1760-1840, Joanna Cruickshank

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In 1770, the renowned Methodist leader Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher) published a letter of advice she had written to a young woman named Elizabeth Andrews. Amidst a flood of detailed advice about the life of faith, including recommendations about spiritual disciplines, reading matter, and marriage, Bosanquet urged her young friend:

Strive to be little and unknown; and remember that our Lord lived thirty years in private, and only three in publick, and that the word of God allows a woman, professing godliness, no adorning but that of a meek and quiet spirit. Strive, I say, to be little and unknown; …

Samuel Johnson At Prayer, Elizabeth Kraft

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Samuel Johnson's life was punctuated by prayer. In this essay, I will examine Johnson's prayer practice in terms of both meaning and behavior. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language provides clear and succinct evidence in Johnson's own words of what he understood prayer and the act of praying to be. Of the two definitions of prayer and the seven definitions of to pray included in the Dictionary, the first in each category concerns religion and simply states that the noun and the verb are the same. According to Johnson the first meaning of to pray is "to make petitions to …

Heart Religion In The British Enlightenment: Gender And Emotion In Early Methodism: Book Review, Dustin D. Stewart

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Problems of agency often materialize as problems of attribution. Early in her remarkable new study, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment, historian Phyllis Mack describes how eighteenthcentury Methodists are typically viewed as either "emotionally needy followers or ... a mob of hysterical worshippers run amok:' Such Methodists, Mack contends, "have rarely been viewed as thinkers and actors" in their own right (5). To make amends, Mack delves into the agency of the everyday. She discloses how lay Methodists and leaders, men and women alike, used various forms of writing as tools for the work of emotional self-fashioning. What made …

"Chastisements Of A Heavenly Father": The Meaning Of The London Earthquakes Of 1750, Christopher Smyth

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

When two earthquakes struck London early in 1750, terror and fury broke forth just as suddenly as the shaking of the earth. Clergymen, newspaper writers, and concerned laymen poured forth angry diatribes on the sins that brought England to the brink of ruin. Scores of sermons flowed off the presses, condemning the instinctive panic of the populace even as they added to it. Hundreds fled the city, certain it was about to be swallowed up. For a month, the religious meaning of the shocks swamped all other discussions, as Englishmen confronted the seemingly obvious fact that God was angry with …

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, …

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 …

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 …