Godless fictions in the eighteenth century: a literary history of atheism
An age of atheism -- A complete system of atheism: Jonathan Swift -- Godless dunces: Alexander Pope -- The limits of self: Sarah Fielding -- Gender and the Orient: Phebe Gibbes -- Ecumenical poetics: William Cowper -- Sympathy and unbelief: Percy Shelley.
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge, United Kingdom New York, NY Port Melbourne, Australia New Delhi, India Singapore
Cambridge University Press
2020
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| In: | Year: 2020 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
English language
/ Literature
/ Atheism (Motif)
/ History 1700-1800
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| Further subjects: | B
English fiction 18th century
History and criticism
B Atheism in literature B English fiction B Criticism, interpretation, etc B English fiction ; 18th century ; History and criticism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | An age of atheism -- A complete system of atheism: Jonathan Swift -- Godless dunces: Alexander Pope -- The limits of self: Sarah Fielding -- Gender and the Orient: Phebe Gibbes -- Ecumenical poetics: William Cowper -- Sympathy and unbelief: Percy Shelley. "Godless Fictions traces a literary history of atheism in eighteenth-century Britain, illustrating the paradoxical ways in which atheism's presence in the period's literature was meant to prevent its presence in the real world. To demonstrate atheism's centrality in the period, I focus on imaginative worlds in which God is entirely absent and on characters that, in Archbishop Tillotson's terms, "do not believe the foundations and principles of religion," chiefly "the existence of GOD." The key authors I address-Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Sarah Fielding, Phebe Gibbes, and William Cowper-discovered in atheism a generative literary concept that helped produce some of their most well-known works. For instance, Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple (1744), and Cowper's The Task (1785) all imagine worlds overwhelmed by godlessness. Like the heroine of Gibbes's Lady Louisa Stroud (1764), Caroline Stretton, who is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by that novel's villainous male atheist, these works are fascinated by, and sometimes flirt dangerously with, unbelief. In other words, even as atheism is presented as something to be avoided at all costs, these godless fictions continually return to it, betraying an anxiety that is otherwise denied in their most straightforward disavowals of irreligion"-- |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 259-275 |
| ISBN: | 1108869467 |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/9781108869461 |