Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century

A Literary History of Atheism

James Bryant Reeves (Texas State University, San Marcos)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
09 July 2020

Although there were no self-avowed British atheists before the 1780s, authors including Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Sarah Fielding, Phebe Gibbes, and William Cowper worried extensively about atheism's dystopian possibilities, and routinely represented atheists as being beyond the pale of human sympathy. Challenging traditional formulations of secularization that equate modernity with unbelief, Reeves reveals how reactions against atheism rather helped sustain various forms of religious belief throughout the Age of Enlightenment. He demonstrates that hostility to unbelief likewise produced various forms of religious ecumenicalism, with authors depicting non-Christian theists from around Britain's emerging empire as sympathetic allies in the fight against irreligion. Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century traces a literary history of atheism in eighteenth-century Britain for the first time, revealing a relationship between atheism and secularization far more fraught than has previously been supposed.

By: James Bryant Reeves (Texas State University San Marcos)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 155mm, Width: 235mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 600g
ISBN: 9781108835909
ISBN 10: 1108835902
Pages: 260
Publication Date: 09 July 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction. An age of atheism; 1. A complete system of atheism: Jonathan Swift; 2. Godless dunces: Alexander Pope; 3. The limits of self: Sarah Fielding; 4. Gender and the Orient: Phebe Gibbes; 5. Ecumenical poetics: William Cowper; 6. Sympathy and unbelief: Percy Shelley.

James Bryant Reeves is an assistant professor of English at Texas State University, San Marcos. His work has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, the Keats-Shelley Journal, and SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Linacre College, Oxford, and University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2016.

Reviews for Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century: A Literary History of Atheism

'Godless Fictions is a powerful intervention in an ongoing conversation about the role of belief and wonder in the long eighteenth century, ...' Misty G. Anderson, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 'A lucid, richly contextualized perspective on Enlightenment religion and sociability as well as literature. Recommended.' M. E. Burstein, Choice '… a fresh, post-secular take on the literary representation of religious non-belief in Britain … Godless Fictions pioneers the study of atheism as a shaping force for fiction in the period.' Lisa O'Connell, Eighteenth-Century Studies