Alisa Clapp-Itnyre & Julie Melnyk 
"Perplext in Faith" [PDF ebook] 
Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts

In the last twenty years, there has been a growing recognition of the centrality of religious beliefs to an understanding of Victorian literature and society. This interdisciplinary collection makes a significant contribution to post-secularist scholarship on Victorian culture, reflecting the great diversity of religious beliefs and doubts in Victorian Britain, with essays on Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Unitarian, and spiritualist topics. Writing from a variety of disciplinary perspectives for an interdisciplinary audience, the essayists investigate religious belief using diverse historical and literary sources, including journalism, hymns, paintings, travel-writings, scientific papers, novels, and poetry.Essays in the volume examine topics including: The relation between science and religion in the career of evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (Thomas Prasch); The continuing significance of the Bible in geopolitical discourse (Eric Reisenauer); The role of children and children’s hymns in the missionary and temperance movements (Alisa Clapp-Itnyre); The role of women in Christian and Jewish traditions (Julie Melnyk and Lindsay Dearinger); The revival of Catholicism and Catholic culture and practices (Katherine Haldane Grenier and Michelle Meinhart); The occult religious society Golden Dawn (Sharon Cogdill); Faith in the writings of the Bronte sisters (Christine Colon), Charles Dickens (Jessica Hughes) and George Eliot (Robert Koepp).