
Contents
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Dissent Old and New Dissent Old and New
-
Dissent beyond Religion Dissent beyond Religion
-
The Limits of Secularism The Limits of Secularism
-
George Eliot and Our Canons of Heterodoxy George Eliot and Our Canons of Heterodoxy
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2 George Eliot among Evangelicals, Dissenters, and Freethinkers
Get accessSebastian Lecourt is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston. His research focuses on Victorian literature and questions of secularisation, colonialism, and comparativism. He is the author of Cultivating Belief: Victorian Anthropology, Liberal Aesthetics, and the Secular Imagination (OUP, 2018) and his essays have appeared in PMLA, Representations, Victorian Studies, ELH, and Victorian Literature and Culture. He is currently working on a book entitled The Genres of Comparative Religion, 1783–1927.
-
Published:20 March 2025
Cite
Abstract
This chapter traces George Eliot’s relationship to different varieties of English religious heterodoxy during the 1840s and the 1850s. Charting Eliot’s course among Evangelicalism, Dissent, and secularism illuminates a couple of larger stories—one about the period, and one about our scholarship. First, it shows how Victorian heterodoxy was a spectrum on which Evangelicals and secularists often shared a common vocabulary for talking about truth-commitments. Second, it reveals the gap between the world of religious radicalism that Eliot was immersed in during her early years and the more genteel, literary ‘crisis of faith’ with which Victorianist scholars have come to associate her. Although Eliot’s religious transformation was shaped by rural Protestant Dissent and London radicalism, critics have tended to lump her in with Anglican writers like Matthew Arnold and Alfred Tennyson. This conscription has had the retrospective effect of diminishing the radicalism of Eliot’s formative milieu.
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
March 2025 | 6 |
April 2025 | 3 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.