Against Melancholy: Robert Blakeway and the Anglican Definition of an Orthodox Sorrow in Early Eighteenth-Century England (2023)
Scholars have long recognized the significance of the concept of ‘enthusiasm’ in eighteenth-century British culture. Its association with melancholy made it a powerful tool for dealing with religious and political dissent by dismissing enthusiasts' claims to divine inspiration as the delusions of their troubled minds. However, the medicalization of enthusiasm also meant that many Christians felt the need to defend their own faith against accusations that it caused melancholy. By examining and contextualizing Robert Blakeway's essay on religious melancholy, this article explores this latter concern. It suggests that such a preoccupation was related both to the fear of enthusiasm and to the fear of irreligion. Blakeway's essay is presented as an example of a broader effort by Anglican clergy to define an ‘orthodox sorrow’ as a middle way between enthusiastic melancholy and lukewarm indifference. Finally, the article emphasizes the polemical dimension of the vocabulary of sorrow in eighteenth-century England.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Johnson, Steven;
(2008)
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America
(/isis/citation/CBB000954683/)
Article
Schliesser, Eric;
(2013)
On Reading Newton as an Epicurean: Kant, Spinozism and the Changes to the Principia
(/isis/citation/CBB001320265/)
Article
Jan Verplaetse;
(2020)
Wild melancholy. On the historical plausibility of a black bile theory of blood madness, or hæmatomania
(/isis/citation/CBB092538668/)
Article
Stanley, Matthew;
(2008)
Mysticism and Marxism: A. S. Eddington, Chapman Cohen, and Political Engagement through Science Popularization
(/isis/citation/CBB000932231/)
Book
Miller, Ted H.;
(2011)
Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes
(/isis/citation/CBB001214739/)
Article
Hale, Piers J.;
(2013)
Monkeys into Men and Men into Monkeys: Chance and Contingency in the Evolution of Man, Mind and Morals in Charles Kingsley's Water Babies
(/isis/citation/CBB001320622/)
Article
Finnegan, Diarmid A.;
Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey;
(2015)
Catholics, Science and Civic Culture in Victorian Belfast
(/isis/citation/CBB001551285/)
Article
Kugelmann, Robert;
Belzen, Jacob A.;
(2009)
Historical Intersections of Psychology, Religion, and Politics in National Contexts
(/isis/citation/CBB000931970/)
Book
Lander, James;
(2010)
Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science, and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001023156/)
Book
Collins, Siobhán;
(2013)
Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis
(/isis/citation/CBB001201705/)
Book
Janacek, Bruce;
(2011)
Alchemical Belief: Occultism in the Religious Culture of Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB001320277/)
Chapter
Burns, W. E.;
(2001)
A Whig Apocalypse: Astrology, Millenarianism, and Politics in England during the Restoration Crisis, 1678-1683
(/isis/citation/CBB000500693/)
Article
Richards, Graham;
(2009)
Goodwill in the Valley of the Shadow: Religion, Psychotherapy, and Politics in Britain from 1945 to the Early 1960s
(/isis/citation/CBB000931973/)
Thesis
Thomasson, Brian Alan;
(2014)
Darwinism and Religion in England's State Secondary Schools, 1920--1980
(/isis/citation/CBB001567606/)
Book
Anne C. Vila;
(2018)
Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France
(/isis/citation/CBB912821366/)
Article
Peset, Jose Luis;
(2014)
La melancolía en la obra de Pedro Gatell, cirujano y marino ilustrado
(/isis/citation/CBB001450515/)
Book
Heilbron, John L.;
(2024)
The Incomparable Monsignor: Francesco Bianchini's World of Science, History and Court
(/isis/citation/CBB638428404/)
Book
Davide Arecco;
(2019)
La corona e il cannocchiale. La scienza inglese e scozzese nel secolo degli Stuart
(/isis/citation/CBB263387901/)
Book
Niccolò Guicciardini;
(2021)
Isaac Newton: Filosofo della Natura, interprete della Scrittura, cronologo degli Antichi Regni
(/isis/citation/CBB698089545/)
Book
Thomas Apel;
(2016)
Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB204540027/)
Be the first to comment!