Description
Book SynopsisA revelatory reading of the British novel that considers interfaith marriage, religious toleration, and the ethics of sociability. Bringing together feminist theory, novel criticism, and religious studies, Alison Conway's Sacred Engagements advances a postsecular reading of the novel that links religious tolerance and the eighteenth-century marriage plot. Conway explores the historical roots of the vexed questions that interfaith marriage continues to raise today. She argues that narrative wields the power to imagine conjugal and religious relations that support the embodied politics crucial to a communal, rather than state-sponsored, ethics of toleration. Conway studies the communal and gendered aspects of religious experience embedded in Samuel Richardson's account of interfaith marriage and liberalism's understandings of toleration in Sir Charles Grandison. In her readings of Frances Brooke, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Maria Edgeworth, Conway considers how women authors reframe the
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Novel Intimacies
Chapter 1. Religious Toleration and Interfaith Marriage, 1640-1720
Chapter 2. Sir Charles Grandison's Religious Disturbances
Chapter 3. Frances Brooke's Civil Disputes
Chapter 4. Elizabeth Inchbald among the Cisalpines
Chapter 5. Maria Edgeworth's Jewish Enlightenment
Conclusion: Mansfield Park Closes Its Gates
Notes
Bibliography
Index
