Pamela and the Anglican Crisis of the 1730s

Stewart, Carol (2009) Pamela and the Anglican Crisis of the 1730s. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (1). pp. 37-51. ISSN 1754-0208

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Abstract

The publication of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded in 1739 is read as a response to the contemporary crisis of authority in the Anglican Church. Anglican clergy were commonly perceived as corrupt, weak or remote. The Church's moral authority was threatened by its subordination to Whig interests, and its power and influence in the state were endangered by anticlerical legislation put before Parliament in the 1730s. In 1739 the Methodist George Whitefield attacked the Anglican reconciliation of virtue with worldly interest. Richardson deployed fiction to defend the Anglican ethos in Pamela by emphatically rewarding his heroine's ‘virtue’.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	novel,crisis,religion,anglicanism,moral authority,virtue
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Research Group
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	21 May 2024 11:30
Last Modified:	21 May 2024 11:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95257
DOI:	10.1111/j.1754-0208.2008.00109.x

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