The Old Enemies
Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture

This wide-ranging, well-illustrated study explores how the ancient divisions between Catholics and Protestants continued in the Victorian age.

Michael Wheeler (Author)

9780521292818, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 June 2011

370 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

Review of the hardback: '…his richly documented study of the controversies of the period. …It is an authoritative and intelligent study of misunderstanding prolonged by prejudice. …The richness of his reading bears fruit in lucid findings. He has read and consulted many books of which his readers will not have heard. Scholars will be in debt to him for his discoveries in unfrequented fields. …There will be very few if any scholars who will not learn a good deal from this book.' The Downside Review

Divisions between Catholics and Protestants have been a feature of English history since the Reformation. Even into the industrial nineteenth century, age-old theological disagreements were the cause of religious and cultural conflicts. The Old Enemies asks why these ancient divisions were so deep, why they continued into the nineteenth century and how novelists and poets, theologians and preachers, historians and essayists reinterpreted the religious debates. Michael Wheeler, a leading authority on the literature and theology of the period, explains how each side misunderstood the other's deeply held beliefs about history, authority, doctrine and spirituality, and, conversely, how these theological conflicts were a source of inspiration and creativity in the arts. This wide-ranging, well-illustrated study sheds light on nineteenth-century history, literature and religion.

1. Introduction: 'Papal aggression'
Part I. Bloody Histories: 2. On the origin of churches
3. England drawn and quartered
4. Jacobite claims and London mobs
Part II. Creeds and Crises: 5. The fortress of Christianity
6. Out of the war of tongues
7. Authority on the rocks
Part III. Cultural Spaces: 8. Maiden and mother
9. Liberalism and dogma
10. Painful epiphanies
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]