The Shortest Way with Defoe
The Shortest Way with Defoe

Author: Michael B. Prince

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0813943663

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A scholarly and imaginative reconstruction of the voyage Daniel Defoe took from the pillory to literary immortality, The Shortest Way with Defoe contends that Robinson Crusoe contains a secret satire, written against one person, that has gone undetected for 300 years. By locating Defoe's nemesis and discovering what he represented and how Defoe fought him, Michael Prince's book opens the way to a new account of Defoe's emergence as a novelist. The book begins with Defoe’s conviction for seditious libel for penning a pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). A question of biography segues into questions of theology and intellectual history and of formal analysis; these questions in turn require close attention to the early reception of Defoe's works, especially by those who hated or suspected him. Prince aims to recover the way of reading Defoe that his enemies considered accurate. Thus, the book rethinks the positions represented in Defoe's ambiguous alternation and mimicking of narrative and editorial voices in his tracts, proto-novels, and novels. By examining Defoe's early publications alongside Robinson Crusoe, Prince shows that Defoe traveled through nonrealist, nonhistorical genres on the way to discovering the form of prose fiction we now call the novel. Moreover, a climate (or figure) of extreme religious intolerance and political persecution required Defoe always to seek refuge in literary disguise. And, religious convictions aside, Defoe's practice as a writer found him inhabiting forms known for their covert deism.

Archetypal Heresy
Archetypal Heresy

Author: Maurice Wiles

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0199245916

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Arianism started as a movement in the third century AD - maintaining that Jesus was less divine than God. Traditionally regarded as the archetypal Christian heresy, it was condemned in the famous Nicene Creed and apparently squashed by the early church. Less well known is the fact that fifteen centuries later, Arianism was alive and well, championed by Isaac Newton and other scientists of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Maurice Wiles asks how and why Arianism endured.

The Mental Universe of the English Nonjurors
The Mental Universe of the English Nonjurors

Author: John William Klein

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1664190414

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The Glorious Revolution of 1688, which pushed James II from the throne of England, was not glorious for everyone; in fact, for many, it was a great disaster. Those who had already taken an oath of allegiance to James II and “to his heirs and lawful successors” now pondered how they could take a second oath to William and Mary. Those who initially refused to swear the oaths were called Nonjurors. In 1691, Archbishop Sancroft, eight bishops, and four hundred clergy of the Church of England, as well as a substantial number of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, were deprived, removed from their offices and their license to practice removed. The loss of this talent to the realm was incalcuable. Ten different paradigms shaped the English Nonjurors’ worldview: Passive Obedience was paramount, the Apostolic Succession essential, a Cyprianist mentality colored everything, they held a conscientious regard for oaths, the Usages Controversy brought Tradition to the fore, printing presses replaced lost pulpits, patronage was a means of protection and proliferation, they lived with a hybridized conception of time, creative women spiritual writers complemented male bishops, and a global ecumenical approach to the Orthodox East was visionary. These ten operated synergistically to create an effective tool for the Nonjurors’ survival and success in their mission. The Nonjurors’ influence, out of all proportion to their size, was due in large measure to this mentality. Their unique circumstances prompted creative thinking, and they were superb in that endeavor. These perspectives constituted the infrastructure of the Nonjurors’ world, and they help us to see the early eighteenth century not only as a time of rapid change, but also as an era of persistent older religious mentalities adapted to new circumstances.