Victorian Cosmopolitanism and English Catholicity in the Mid-Century Novel argues that the Creedal doctrines of "the communion of saints" and the "holy Catholic Church" provided Victorian novelists-both Roman Catholic and Protestant-with a means of exploring religious forms of cosmopolitanism. Building on research exploring the divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in Victorian literature and culture, Teresa Huffman Traver considers the extent to which anti-Catholicism, domesticity, and national identity were linked. Huffman Traver connects this research with cosmopolitan theory, and analyzes how the conception of Catholicity could be used to reach beyond national identity towards a transnational community. Investigating the idea of a "rooted" cosmopolitanism, grounded in the local and limited in scope, this Pivot book offers a new angle on how religion, domesticity, and national identity were constructed in nineteenth-century British culture.

Autorentext

Teresa Huffman Traver is Associate Professor of English at The California State University, Chico, USA. She specializes in Victorian literature and children's literature. Her work has appeared in Literature/Film Quarterly, Victorian Review, and Women's Writing.

Inhalt
One: Introduction: A Home for the Lonely4I. One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church5II. Home, Church, Nation and Beyond13III. Nineteenth-Century Religious Controversy19IV. Catholicity and Literature22Two: Shipwrecks, House-fires, and Mourning Rings30I. Uniting the Divided House31II. Into the Bear-garden41III. Communion with a Heretic48Three: Losing a Family, Gaining a Church57I. Converts and Broken Homes: From Oxford to Rome and the Connelly Case58II. Critiquing the Domestic Ideal75III. Beyond Home and Homeland82Four: Conversion, Duality, and Vocation: The Perpetual Curate93I. History, Conversion, and Betrayal96II. The Convert as Dualist: The Case of Gerald Wentworth100III. Duplicity and Disguise: Jesuits in Carlingford?105IV. Lucy, Frank, and The Great Work111Five: Home by Michaelmas: Yonge's Tractarian Domestic123I.The Home, the Church, and the World124II. Constructing the Tractarian Domestic128III. I believe in the Communion of Saints135Six: Conclusion: Desire of Nations146