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Reading Genesis in the Long Eighteenth Century
In a reassessment of the long-accepted division between religion and enlightenment, Ana Acosta here traces a tissue of readings and adaptations of Genesis and Scriptural language from Milton through Rousseau to Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Acosta's interdisciplinary approach places these writers in the broader context of eighteenth-century political theory, biblical criticism, religious studies and utopianism. Acosta's argument is twofold: she establishes the importance of Genesis within utopian thinking, in particular the influential models of Milton and Rousseau; and she demonstrates that the power of these models can be explained neither by traditional religious paradigms nor by those of religion or philosophy. In establishing the relationship between biblical criticism and republican utopias, Acosta makes a solid case that important utopian visions are better understood against the background of Genesis interpretation. This study opens a new perspective on theories of secularization, and as such will interest scholars of religious studies, intellectual history, and philosophy as well as of literary studies.
Dinner with Joseph Johnson
A fascinating portrait of a radical age through the writers associated with a London publisher and bookseller—from William Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft to Benjamin Franklin Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables may have been unappetising but the company was convivial and the conversation brilliant and unpredictable. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. In this book, Daisy Hay paints a remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age through the connected stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and who...
Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century
Focusing on eighteenth-century constructions of symbolic femininity and eighteenth-century women's writing in relation to contemporary utopian discourse, this volume adjusts our understanding of the utopia of the Enlightenment, placing a unique emphasis on colonial utopias. These essays reflect on issues related to specific configurations of utopias and utopianism by considering in detail English and French texts by both women (Sarah Scott, Sarah Fielding, Isabelle de Charrière) and men (Paltock and Montesquieu). The contributors ask the following questions: In the influential discourses of eighteenth-century utopian writing, is there a place for 'woman,' and if so, what (or where) is it? How do 'women' disrupt, confirm, or ground the utopian projects within which these constructs occur? By posing questions about the inscription of gender in the context of eighteenth-century utopian writing, the contributors shed new light on the eighteenth-century legacies that continue to shape contemporary views of social and political progress.
War and Peace
Reflections on Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” these original essays examine various facets of violence and human efforts to create peace. Religion is deeply involved in both processes: ones that produce violence and ones that seek to create harmony. In the war on terror, radical religion is often seen to be a major cause of inter-group violence. However, these essays show a much more complex picture in which religion is often on the receiving end of conflict that has its origin in the actions of the state in response to tensions between majorities and minorities. As this volume demonstrates, the more public religion becomes, the more likely it is to be imbricated in communal strife.
British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century
France and Great Britain, so close geographically but separated by language, culture and history, had been exchanging merchandise, visitors, rulers and ideas for hundreds of years before the eighteenth century. The flow of traffic only quickened during this period, and became a flood, in the direction of Great Britain, during the decade following the Revolution. While certain of these exchanges, such as Voltaire’s sojourn abroad, have been studied in detail, others are coming into focus only as scholars study secondary figures in the host country and the interactions of various groups with its citizens. British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century gathers together fourteen recent ess...
Boundless Innocence in Thomas Traherne's Poetic Theology
The seventeenth-century poet and divine Thomas Traherne finds innocence in every stage of existence. He finds it in the chaos at the origins of creation as well as in the blessed order of Eden. He finds it in the activities of grace and the hope of glory, but also in the trials of misery and even in the abyss of the Fall. Boundless Innocence in Thomas Traherne’s Poetic Theology traces innocence through Traherne’s works as it transgresses the boundaries of the estates of the soul. Using grammatical and literary categories it explores various aspects of his poetic theology of innocence, uncovering the boundless desire which is embodied in the yearning cry: ’Were all Men Wise and Innocent...’ Recovering and reinterpreting a key but increasingly neglected theme in Traherne’s poetic theology, this book addresses fundamental misconceptions of the meaning of innocence in his work. Through a contextual and theological approach, it indicates the unexplored richness, complexity and diversity of this theme in the history of literature and theology.
The Eighteenth-Century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics
Linking the decline in Church authority in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with the increasing respectability of fiction, Carol Stewart provides a new perspective on the rise of the novel. The resulting readings of novels by authors such as Samuel Richardson, Sarah Fielding, Frances Sheridan, Charlotte Lennox, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, William Godwin, and Jane Austen trace the translation of ethical debate into secular and gendered terms. Stewart argues that the seventeenth-century debate about ethics that divided Latitudinarians and Calvinists found its way into novels of the eighteenth century. Her book explores the growing belief that novels could do the work of moral reform more effectively than the Anglican Church, with attention to related developments, including the promulgation of Anglican ethics in novels as a response to challenges to Anglican practice and authority. An increasingly legitimate genre, she argues, offered a forum both for investigating the situation of women and challenging patriarchal authority, and for challenging the dominant political ideology.
Alfred Loisy and Modern Biblical Studies
The French Catholic priest and biblical scholar Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was at the heart of the Roman Catholic Modernist crisis in the early part of the twentieth century. He saw much of his work as an attempt to bring John Henry Newman’s notion of development of doctrine into the realm of Catholic biblical studies, and thereby transform Catholic theology. This volume situates Loisy’s better known works on the New Testament and theology in the context of his lesser known work in Assyriology and Old Testament studies. His early training in Assyriology taught Loisy a comparative historical approach to studying ancient texts, in addition to providing him the requisite training in ancient N...
Volney: ‘The Ruins' and ‘Catechism of Natural Law'
Volney was once as influential as Tom Paine, and the author of one of the most popular works of the French Revolutionary era. The Ruins of Empires makes an argument for popular sovereignty, couched in the alluring and accessible form of an Oriental dream-tale. A favourite of both Thomas Jefferson, who translated it, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the Ruins advances a scheme of radical, utopian politics premised upon the deconstruction of all the world's religions. It was widely celebrated by radicals in Britain and America, and exercised an enormous influence on poets from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Walt Whitman for its indictments of tyranny and priestcraft. Volney instead advocates a return to natural precepts shorn of superstition, set out in his sequel, the Catechism of Natural Law. These days Volney enjoys a high profile in African-American Studies as a proponent of Black Egyptianism.
Anna Letitia Barbauld and Eighteenth-Century Visionary Poetics
In this first critical study of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s major work, Daniel P. Watkins reveals the singular purpose of Barbauld’s visionary poems: to recreate the world based on the values of liberty and justice. Watkins examines in close detail both the form and content of Barbauld’s Poems, originally published in 1773 and revised and reissued in 1792. Along with careful readings of the poems that situate the works in their broader political, historical, and philosophical contexts, Watkins explores the relevance of the introductory epigraphs and the importance of the poems’ placement throughout the volume. Centering his study on Barbauld’s effort to develop a visionary poetic stanc...
