Imagining Religious Toleration: A Literary History of an Idea, 1600-1830

by Alison Conway (Editor), David Alvarez (Editor)

Overview

Formerly a site of study reserved for intellectual historians and political philosophers, scholarship on religious toleration, from the perspective of literary scholars, is fairly limited. Largely ignored and understudied techniques employed by writers to influence cultural understandings of tolerance are rich for exploration. In investigating texts ranging from early modern to Romantic, Alison Conway, David Alvarez, and their contributors shed light on what literature can say about toleration, and how it can produce and manage feelings of tolerance and intolerance.

Beginning with an overview of the historical debates surrounding the terms "toleration" and "tolerance," this book moves on to discuss the specific contributions that literature and literary modes have made to cultural history, studying the literary techniques that philosophers, theologians, and political theorists used to frame the questions central to the idea and practice of religious toleration. Tracing the rhetoric employed by a wide range of authors, the contributors delve into topics such as conversion as an instrument of power in Shakespeare; the relationship between religious toleration and the rise of Enlightenment satire; and the ways in which writing can act as a call for tolerance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487501792
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	08/30/2019
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alison Conway is Professor of English and Cultural Studies, and of Gender and Women's Studies, at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan.
David Alvarez is Associate Professor and Chair of English at DePauw University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Imagining Religious Toleration
Alison Conway, University of Western Ontario

1. Shylock, Conversion, Toleration
Paul Yachnin, McGill University

2. New World Behn: Toleration, Geography, and the Question of Humanity
Sharon Achinstein, Johns Hopkins University

3. Blind or Blindfolded? Disability, Religious Difference, and Milton’s Samson Agonistes
Andrew McKendry, Nord University

4. Imagining Worlds and Figuring Toleration: Freedom, Diversity, and Violence in A Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World
Corrinne Harol, University of Alberta

5. How to Handle the Intolerant: The Education of Pierre Bayle
Elena Russo, Johns Hopkins University

6. The Difference Enlightenment Satire Makes to Religion: Hudibras to Hebdo
David Alvarez, DePauw University

7. Daniel Defoe and the Geopolitics of Islamic Toleration
Humberto Garcia, University of California, Merced

8. The Toleration of Enthusiasts
Joanna Picciotto, University of California at Berkeley

9. Joseph Priestley’s Romantic Progressivism
Mark Canuel, University of Illinois at Chicago

10. Translating Love in Prometheus Unbound
Colin Jager, Rutgers University

Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Andrew Hadfield

"Imagining Religious Toleration is a stimulating and provocative project, one which charts a series of writers and their perceptions of toleration. Its intellectual net has been widely cast so that it will undoubtedly attract all types of readers."

Kevin Seidel

"With scholarly voices working across several literary historical periods, Imagining Religious Toleration helps readers rethink stories of toleration. If societies are not becoming more secular as they become more modern, then we need to think again about toleration and religious pluralism, and the essays in Imagining Religious Toleration do just that, providing readers a set of insightful, initial investigations into what we might learn from older, imaginative writing about toleration today and about the role literature might play in sustaining such toleration."

Editorial Reviews

" Imagining Religious Toleration is a stimulating and provocative project, one which charts a series of writers and their perceptions of toleration. Its intellectual net has been widely cast so that it will undoubtedly attract all types of readers."

—Andrew Hadfield, Department of English, University of Sussex

"With scholarly voices working across several literary historical periods, Imagining Religious Toleration helps readers rethink stories of toleration. If societies are not becoming more secular as they become more modern, then we need to think again about toleration and religious pluralism, and the essays in Imagining Religious Toleration do just that, providing readers a set of insightful, initial investigations into what we might learn from older, imaginative writing about toleration today and about the role literature might play in sustaining such toleration."

—Kevin Seidel, Department of English, Eastern Mennonite University

From the Publisher