{"product_id":"the-fringes-of-belief-9780804758772","title":"The Fringes of Belief","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Fringes of Belief\u003c\/i\u003e is the first literary study of freethinking and religious skepticism in the English Enlightenment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The sophisticated, learned, and self-consciously literary world of eighteenth-century religious controversy certainly included an intense engagement with the past and a familiarity with heterodox beliefs. By addressing these issues, Ms. Ellenzweig opens a valuable conversation.\" -- \u003ci\u003eThe Scriblerian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sarah Ellenzweig's important book intriguingly, and successfully explor[es] the ways in which certain free-thinkers in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, while suspicious of the tenets of revealed religion, nevertheless defended the religious establishment as being the key to preserving order in society after the traumas of the Interregnum. . . [L]ively and intelligent.\" -- Jeremy Gregory * \u003ci\u003eEnglish Historical Review\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"In \u003ci\u003eThe Fringes of Belief\u003c\/i\u003e, Sarah Ellenzweig excavates a fascinating but generally overlooked intellectual tradition that combined political conservatism with radical skepticism. Challenging traditional categories with cogent insight, perceptive reading, and revised versions of intellectual history, Ellenzweig offers fresh and complex appreciations of Aphra Behn, the Earl of Rochester, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and others.\" -- Laura Rosenthal * University of Maryland *\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Fringes of Belief\u003c\/i\u003e is one of those all-too-rare books that makes a sharp, original, and provocative argument in a clear and engaging way. Expressing dissatisfaction with the secularization narrative has become commonplace. But it is much harder to come up with alternatives—let alone a subtle, profoundly revisionist one like Ellenzweig's.\" -- Dror Wahrman * Indiana University *\u003cbr\u003e\"At a moment of intense debate over the nature of the Enlightenment, Sarah Ellenzweig's \u003ci\u003eThe Fringes of Belief\u003c\/i\u003e comes as an added reminder of just how complex and contrapuntal intellectual history can be . . . [T]his engaging study will be of interest to literary scholars, historians, and scholars of the Enlightenment more generally.\" -- Kenneth Sheppard * \u003ci\u003eHistoire sociale \/ Social History\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContents  Introduction   Literary Culture, the Classical Past, and the Rise of Restoration Freethinking\t  Part I: Libertine Precursors  Chapter One   Rochester, Blount, and the Faith of Unbelief\t\t\t\t\t\t  Chapter Two   Behn, Fontenelle, and the Cheats of Revealed Religion\t\t\t\t  Part II: Skepticism and Piety  Chapter Three   Swift's Tale of a Tub and the Anthropology of Religion\t\t\t\t  Chapter Four   Suspending Disbelief: Swift, Credulity, and the Pious Fraud\t\t\t  Conclusion   Pope's \"Essay on Man\" and the Afterlife of English Freethinking  Notes  Bibliography\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  Index","brand":"Stanford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49405573300567,"sku":"9780804758772","price":55.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780804758772.jpg?v=1730492883","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-fringes-of-belief-9780804758772","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}