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Cornell University Press - Jeffrey Franklin J.

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Spirit Matters explores the heterodox and unorthodox religions and spiritualities that arose in Victorian Britain as a result of the faltering of Christian faith in the face of modernity, the rise of the truth-telling authority of science, and the first full exposure of the West to non-Christian religions. J. Jeffrey Franklin investigates the diversity of ways that spiritual seekers struggled to maintain faith or to create new faiths by reconciling elements of the Judeo-Christian heritage with Spiritualism, Buddhism, occultism, and scientific naturalism. Spirit Matters covers a range of scenarios from the Victorian hearth and the state-Church altar to the frontiers of empire in Buddhist countries and Egyptian crypts. Franklin reveals how this diversity of elements provided the materials for the formation of new hybrid religions and the emergence in the 20th century of New Age spiritualities.Franklin investigates a broad spectrum of experiences through a series of representative case studies that together trace the development of unorthodox religious and spiritual discourses. The ideas and events discussed by Franklin through these case studies were considered outside the domain of orthodox religion yet still religious or spiritual rather than atheistic or materialistic. Among the works-obscure and canonical-he analyzes are Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni and A Strange Story; Forest Life in Ceylon, by William Knighton; Anthony Trollope's The Vicar of Bullhampton; Anna Leonowens's The English Governess at the Siamese Court; Literature and Dogma, by Matthew Arnold; and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

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History of Europe

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Publié par	Cornell University Press
Date de parution	15 mars 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781501715464
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,7500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Spirit Matters

Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian Britain

J. Jeffrey Franklin

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2018 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Franklin, J. Jeffrey, author. Title: Spirit matters : occult beliefs, alternative religions, and the crisis of faith in Victorian Britain / J. Jeffrey Franklin. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2017028029 (print) | LCCN 2017051440 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501715457 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501715464 (ret) | ISBN 9781501715440 | ISBN 9781501715440 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: English prose literature—19th century—History and criticism. | Occultism in literature. | Spiritualism in literature. | Occultism—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Spiritualism—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Religion and culture—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Great Britain—Religion—19th century. Classiﬁcation: LCC PR788.O33 (ebook) | LCC PR788.O33 F73 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.91209034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017028029

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Dedicated to William Henry Trotter and Selmon Theodore Franklin, my grandfathers, patriarchs of faith

Preface

Acknowledgments

Contents

1. Orthodox Christianity, Scientiﬁc Materialism, and Alternative Religions

Part I: Challenges to Christianity and the Orthodox/Heterodox Boundary

2. The Evolution of Occult Spirituality in Victorian England and the Representative Case of Edward BulwerLytton

3. Anthony Trollope’s Religion: The Orthodox/Heterodox Boundary

4. The Inﬂuences of Buddhism and Comparative Religion on Matthew Arnold’s Theology

xix

vi i i Contents

Part II: The Interpenetration of Christianity and Buddhism

5. Interpenetration of Religion and National Politics in Great Britain and Sri Lanka: William Knighton’sForest Life in Ceylon

6. Identity, Genre, and Religion in Anna Leonowens’s The English Governess at the Siamese Court

Part III: The Turn to Occultism

7. Ancient Egyptian Religion in Late Victorian England

8. The Economics of Immortality: The Demiimmortal Oriental, Enlightenment Vitalism, and Political Economy in Bram Stoker’sDracula

Part IV: The Origins of Alternative Religion in Victorian Britain

Conclusion: From Victorian Occultism to New Age Spiritualities

Notes

Bibliography

Index

115

141

164

185

213

229

251

Preface

There was a widespread urgency in the Victorian period (1837–1901) to defend the continued existence of and belief in “Spirit” against the growing forces of what was called “materialism.” As Hudson Tuttle summarized in his “Manual of Spiritual Science and Philosophy” in 1867: “There is no alternative, and material science is fast driving Christianity to the wall. It has taken all the thinkers of the world. The church holds only those who do not think. Spiritualism is the last stronghold against the tide of mate rialism, and if it fails to establish its claims, the former will be supremely triumphant” (56). From the remove of twentyﬁrstcentury postindustrial society and postmodern culture, it may be difﬁcult to appreciate how dire that urgency was, concerning as it did nothing less than the negation of the continued existence of the human soul and of God’s loving dispensa tion for human beings as his privileged creation. “Spirit” had multiple connotations, but it might be summarized as faith in or claimed proof of the existence at the most fundamental level of any type of anthropocentric spiritual entities or realms. Those ranged from the immortal soul to the

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Spirit Matters , livre ebook

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