Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: James Bryant Reeves
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108835902
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Documents eighteenth-century literary representations of atheism, arguing that opposition to atheism generated unique forms of religious belief.

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: James Bryant Reeves
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108835902
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Documents eighteenth-century literary representations of atheism, arguing that opposition to atheism generated unique forms of religious belief.

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century

Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: James Bryant Reeves
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108874819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Although there were no self-avowed British atheists before the 1780s, authors including Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Sarah Fielding, Phebe Gibbes, and William Cowper worried extensively about atheism's dystopian possibilities, and routinely represented atheists as being beyond the pale of human sympathy. Challenging traditional formulations of secularization that equate modernity with unbelief, Reeves reveals how reactions against atheism rather helped sustain various forms of religious belief throughout the Age of Enlightenment. He demonstrates that hostility to unbelief likewise produced various forms of religious ecumenicalism, with authors depicting non-Christian theists from around Britain's emerging empire as sympathetic allies in the fight against irreligion. Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century traces a literary history of atheism in eighteenth-century Britain for the first time, revealing a relationship between atheism and secularization far more fraught than has previously been supposed.

The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English

The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English PDF Author: Sarah Eron
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003845266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 905

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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literatures in English brings together essays that respond to consequential cultural and socio-economic changes that followed the expansion of the British Empire from the British Isles across the Atlantic. Scholars track the cumulative power of the slave trade, settlements and plantations, and the continual warfare that reshaped lives in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Importantly, they also analyze the ways these histories reshaped class and social relations, scientific inquiry and invention, philosophies of personhood, and cultural and intellectual production. As European nations fought each other for territories and trade routes, dispossessing and enslaving Indigenous and Black people, the observations of travellers, naturalists, and colonists helped consolidate racism and racial differentiation, as well as the philosophical justifications of “civilizational” differences that became the hallmarks of intellectual life. Essays in this volume address key shifts in disciplinary practices even as they examine the past, looking forward to and modeling a rethinking of our scholarly and pedagogic practices. This volume is an essential text for academics, researchers, and students researching eighteenth-century literature, history, and culture.

Biblical Sterne

Biblical Sterne PDF Author: Ryan J. Stark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135017999X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Is Laurence Sterne one of the great Christian apologists? Ryan Stark recommends him as such, perhaps to the detriment of the parson's roguish reputation. The book's aim, however, is not to dispel roguishness but rather to discern the theological motives behind Sterne's comic rhetoric, from Tristram Shandy and the sermons to A Sentimental Journey. To this end, Stark reveals a veritable avalanche of biblical themes and allusions to be found in Sterne, often and seemingly awkwardly in the middle of sex jokes, and yet the effect is not to produce irreverence. On the contrary, we find an irreverently reverent apologetic, Stark argues, and a priest who knows how to play gracefully with religious ideas. Through Sterne, in fact, we might rethink humour's role in the service of religion.

Is There a God?

Is There a God? PDF Author: Graham Oppy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000456293
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Bertrand Russell famously quipped that he didn’t believe in God for the same reason that he didn’t believe in a teapot in orbit between the earth and Mars: it is a bizarre assertion for which no evidence can be provided. Is belief in God really like belief in Russell’s teapot? Kenneth L. Pearce argues that God is no teapot. God is a real answer to the deepest question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? Graham Oppy argues that we should believe that there are none but natural causal entities with none but natural causal properties—and hence should believe that there are no gods. Beginning from this basic disagreement, the authors proceed to discuss and debate a wide range of philosophical questions, including questions about explanation, necessity, rationality, religious experience, mathematical objects, the foundations of ethics, and the methodology of philosophy. Each author first presents his own side, and then they interact through two rounds of objections and replies. Pedagogical features include standard form arguments, section summaries, bolded key terms and principles, a glossary, and annotated reading lists. In the volume foreword, Helen De Cruz calls the debate "both edifying and a joy," and sums up what’s at stake: "Here you have two carefully formulated positive proposals for worldviews that explain all that is: classical theism, or naturalistic atheism. You can follow along with the authors and deliberate: which one do you find more plausible?" Though written with beginning students in mind, this debate will be of interest to philosophers at all levels and to anyone who values careful, rational thought about the nature of reality and our place in it.

Blasphemy and Politics in Romantic Literature

Blasphemy and Politics in Romantic Literature PDF Author: Paul Whickman
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030465705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book argues for the importance of blasphemy in shaping the literature and readership of Percy Bysshe Shelley and of the Romantic period more broadly. Not only are perceptions of blasphemy taken to be inextricable from politics, this book also argues for blasphemous ‘irreverence’ as both inspiring and necessitating new poetic creativity. The book reveals the intersection of blasphemy, censorship and literary property throughout the ‘Long Eighteenth Century’, attesting to the effect of this connection on Shelley’s poetry more specifically. Paul Whickman notes how Shelley’s perceived blasphemy determined the nature and readership of his published works through censorship and literary piracy. Simultaneously, Whickman crucially shows that aesthetics, content and the printed form of the physical text are interconnected and that Shelley’s political and philosophical views manifest themselves in his writing both formally and thematically.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism

The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism PDF Author: Jonathan Yeager
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190863315
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
Evangelicalism, a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity, is one of the most popular and diverse religious movements in the world today. Evangelicals maintain the belief that the essence of the Gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace, through faith in Jesus' atonement. Evangelicals can be found on every continent and among nearly all Christian denominations. The origin of this group of people has been traced to the turn of the eighteenth century, with roots in the Puritan and Pietist movements in England and Germany. The earliest evangelicals could be found among Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Moravians, and Presbyterians throughout North America, Britain, and Western Europe, and included some of the foremost names of the age, such as Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield. Early evangelicals were abolitionists, historians, hymn writers, missionaries, philanthropists, poets, preachers, and theologians. They participated in the major cultural and intellectual currents of the day, and founded institutions of higher education not limited to Dartmouth College, Brown University, and Princeton University. The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism provides the most authoritative and comprehensive overview of the significant figures and religious communities associated with early evangelicalism within the contextual and cultural environment of the long eighteenth century, with essays written by the world's leading experts in the field of eighteenth-century studies.

The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature

The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature PDF Author: Michael Bryson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000552330
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature provides readers with a comprehensive reassessment of the value of humanism in an intellectual landscape. Offering contributions by leading international scholars, this volume seeks to define literature as a core expressive form and an essential constitutive element of newly reformulated understandings of humanism. While the value of humanism has recently been dominated by anti-humanist and post-humanist perspectives which focused on the flaws and exclusions of previous definitions of humanism, this volume examines the human problems, dilemmas, fears, and aspirations expressed in literature, as a fundamentally humanist art form and activity. Divided into three overarching categories, this companion will explore the histories, developments, debates, and contestations of humanism in literature, and deliver fresh definitions of "the new humanism" for the humanities. This focus aims to transcend the boundaries of a world in which human life is all too often defined in terms of restrictions—political, economic, theological, intellectual—and lived in terms of obedience, conformity, isolation, and fear. The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature will provide invaluable support to humanities students and scholars alike seeking to navigate the relevance and resilience of humanism across world cultures and literatures.

The History of Lady Louisa Stroud, and the Honourable Miss Caroline Stretton

The History of Lady Louisa Stroud, and the Honourable Miss Caroline Stretton PDF Author: Mike Franklin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000600912
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
This new edition of the British epistolary novel The History of Lady Louisa Stroud, and the Honourable Miss Caroline Stretton examines the theme of female agency, and is an excellent example of women's writing in the eighteenth-century. The relationships of the author, Phebe Gibbes, with the East India Company, The London Magazine, ‘The Benevolent Society’, and the Royal Literary Society provide rich avenues for research. Accompanied by a new introduction and editorial commentary, this text will be of great interest to students of literary history and women's writing.

The Complete Works of G. K. Chesterton

The Complete Works of G. K. Chesterton PDF Author: G. K. Chesterton
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 8977

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Book Description
The Complete Works of G.K. Chesterton is a comprehensive collection of the legendary writer's diverse and thought-provoking literary creations. Known for his witty humor, keen insight into human nature, and profound commentary on societal issues, Chesterton's works span across various genres including essays, novels, poetry, and detective fiction. His writing style is characterized by a unique blend of paradoxes, irony, and sharp observations, making his works not only intellectually stimulating but also highly entertaining. Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century, Chesterton's literary legacy continues to captivate readers with its timeless relevance and provocative themes. G.K. Chesterton, a prominent figure in the literary landscape of his time, was influenced by his deep-rooted Catholic faith, social activism, and philosophical inquiries. His prolific output of works reflects his wide-ranging interests and profound insights into the complexities of the human experience. Chesterton's sharp wit and intellectual prowess shine through in his writing, earning him a place among the literary giants of his era. I highly recommend The Complete Works of G.K. Chesterton to readers who appreciate philosophical depth, social commentary, and masterful storytelling. Chesterton's unparalleled wit and wisdom offer a rich and rewarding reading experience that will leave a lasting impression on all who delve into his works.