Contesting Cultural Authority
Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life

A volume of essays which constitutes a major overview of the Victorian intellectual enterprise.

Frank M. Turner (Author)

9780521372572, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 April 1993

384 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.73 kg

This volume of essays by a leading scholar of Victorian intellectual history reflects research, teaching and writing carried out over more than twenty years. Five of the essays are new; seven, although published previously, have been revised for this collection. The essays cover an extremely wide spectrum of Victorian thought, including the issues of secularization, cultural apostasy, the crisis of faith, Victorian scientific naturalism, the conflict between science and religion, the relationship of science and politics, and the Victorian attitude towards the ancient world. Taken as a whole the essays constitute a major revisionist overview of the Victorian intellectual enterprise which will be of interest to scholars in a wide variety of fields.

Preface
Part I. Shifting Boundaries: 1. The religious and the secular in Victorian Britain
2. Cultural apostasy and the foundations of Victorian intellectual life
3. The crisis of faith and the faith that was lost
4. The secularization of the social vision of British natural theology
Part II. Science and the Wider Culture: 5. Victorian scientific naturalism and Thomas Carlyle
6. Rainfall, plagues, and the Prince of Wales
7. The Victorian conflict between science and religion: a professional dimension
8. Public science in Britain: 1880–1919
Part III. Moderns and Ancients: 9. British politics and the demise of the Roman public: 1700–1939
10. Ancient materialism and modern science: Lucretius among the Victorians
11. Virgil in Victorian classical contexts
12. The triumph of idealism in Victorian classical studies
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Cultural studies [JFC], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]