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Spirit Matters : Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian Britain
Title
Spirit Matters : Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian Britain / J. Jeffrey Franklin.
ISBN
9781501715464
Publication
Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]
Copyright Notice Date
©2018
Physical Description
1 online resource
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
In English.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
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.
Variant and related titles
De Gruyter University Press eBook pilot project 2018.
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
June 09, 2022
Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
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
4 The Influences of Buddhism and Comparative Religion on Matthew Arnold's Theology
Part II: The Interpenetration of Christianity and Buddhism
5 Interpenetration of Religion and National Politics in Great Britain and Sri Lanka
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
Part IV: The Origins of Alternative Religion in Victorian Britain
Conclusion From Victorian Occultism to New Age Spiritualities
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Subjects
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