Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, and the Borders of the Self

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 betrayed 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 bounda...