Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature (Liverpool University Press - Liverpool English Texts & Studies) (Volume 49)

Exotic, corrupt, and dangerous, Roman Catholicism functioned in the popular Victorian imagination as a highly sensationalized and implacably anti-English enemy. Maureen Moran’s lively study considers a wide range of key authors—including Charlotte Bront?, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, and George Eliot, as well as a number of non-canonical writers—to give a detailed account of the cultural tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Moran shows that rather than representing a traditional religious schism, the demonizing of Catholics resulted from secular fears over crime, sex, and violence. (20080301) Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature offers a highly original examination of Victorian cultural and social conventions through readings of popular literary representations of Roman Catholicism. Maureen Moran argues that Catholic sensationalism provided a rich imaginative resource for Victorians of all denominations (and none) through which a range of cultural contradictions and conflicts could be explored and alternative identities proposed. Previous studies of Catholicism in the period have focused on notions of the exotic, corrupt religious Other which is inscribed as the implaca Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature offers a highly original examination of Victorian sensationalism through the exploration of popular literary representations of Roman Catholicism, that exotic, corrupt religious 'Other' which is inscribed as the implacable anti-English enemy. The book demonstrates how new understandings of cultural tensions of the period are gained through the association of Roman Catholicism with secular fears of crime, sex and violence, rather than with theological 'excesses' and doctrinal 'superstitions'. "Maureen Moran argues that Catholic sensationalism provided a rich imaginative resource for Victorians of all denominations (and none) through which a range of cultural contradictions and conflicts could be explored and alternative identities proposed. This account shows the centrality of the sensational modelling of Catholicism to secular debates about imperialism, gender and sexuality, the role of the law and the body, the power of the emotions and the pleasure of aesthetic sensuality."--BOOK JACKET Title Page......Page 4 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 1: Sensational Invasions: The Jesuit, the State and the Family......Page 37 2: Nuns and Priests: Sensations of the Cloister......Page 86 3: Persecution and Martyrdom: Th e Law and the Body......Page 140 4: Feeling the Great Change: Conversion and the Authority of Affect......Page 186 5: Art Catholicism and the New Catholic Baroque......Page 240 Epilogue......Page 293 Index......Page 320