TY - BOOK AU - Anderson,Misty G. TI - Imagining Methodism in eighteenth-century Britain: enthusiasm, belief, and the borders of the self SN - 9781421405285 AV - PR448.R45 A53 2012eb U1 - 820.9/38287 23 PY - 2012/// CY - Baltimore, Md. PB - Johns Hopkins University Press KW - Methodism in literature KW - Religion in literature KW - English literature KW - 18th century KW - History and criticism KW - Religion dans la littérature KW - Littérature anglaise KW - 18e siècle KW - Histoire et critique KW - LITERARY CRITICISM KW - European KW - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh KW - bisacsh KW - fast KW - Intellectual life KW - Great Britain KW - Grande-Bretagne KW - Vie intellectuelle KW - Electronic books KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc N1 - Includes bibliographical references and index; Historicizing methodism -- The new man -- Words made flesh: Fanny Hill and the language of passion -- Actors and ghosts: Methodism in the theater of the real -- "'My Lord, my love:' the performance of public intimacy and the Methodist hymn -- A usable past: reconciliation in Humphry Clinker and the spiritual Quixote N2 - "In the eighteenth century, British Methodism was an object of both derision and desire. Many popular eighteenth-century works ridiculed Methodists, yet often the very same plays, novels, and prints that cast Methodists as primitive, irrational, or deluded also betray a thinly cloaked fascination with the experiences of divine presence attributed to the new evangelical movement. Misty G. Anderson argues that writers, actors, and artists used Methodism as a concept to interrogate the boundaries of the self and the fluid relationships between the religious and the literary, between reason and enthusiasm, and between theater and belief. Imagining Methodism situates the writing of Henry Fielding, John Cleland, Samuel Foote, Horace Walpole, Tobias Smollett, and others alongside works by John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield in order to understand how Methodism's brand of "experimental religion" was both born of the modern world and perceived as a threat to it. Anderson's analysis of reactions to Methodism exposes a complicated interlocking picture of the religious and the secular, terms less transparent than they seem in current critical usage. Her argument is not about the lives of eighteenth-century Methodists; rather, it is about Methodism as it was imagined in the work of eighteenth-century British writers and artists, where it served as a sign of sexual, cognitive, and social danger. By situating satiric images of Methodists in their popular contexts, she recaptures a vigorous cultural debate over the domains of religion and literature in the modern British imagination. Rich in cultural, literary, and theological analysis, Anderson's argument will be of interest to students and scholars of the eighteenth century, religious studies, theater, and the history of gender."--Project Muse UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=597691 ER -