Contesting Cultural Authority Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life

This volume of essays by a leading scholar of Victorian intellectual history reflects research, teaching and writing carried out over more than twenty years. Five of the essays are new; seven, although published previously, have been revised for this collection. The essays cover an extremely wide spectrum of Victorian thought, including the issues of secularisation, cultural apostasy, the crisis of faith, Victorian scientific naturalism, the conflict between science and religion, the relationship of science and politics, and the Victorian attitude towards the ancient world. Taken as a whole the essays constitute a major revisionist overview of the Victorian intellectual enterprise which will be of interest to scholars in a wide variety of fields.

Preface; Part I. Shifting Boundaries: 1. The religious and the secular in Victorian Britain; 2. Cultural apostasy and the foundations of Victorian intellectual life; 3. The crisis of faith and the faith that was lost; 4. The secularization of the social vision of British natural theology; Part II. Science and the Wider Culture: 5. Victorian scientific naturalism and Thomas Carlyle; 6. Rainfall, plagues, and the Prince of Wales; 7. The Victorian conflict between science and religion: a professional dimension; 8. Public science in Britain: 1880–1919; Part III. Moderns and Ancients: 9. British politics and the demise of the Roman public: 1700–1939; 10. Ancient materialism and modern science: Lucretius among the Victorians; 11. Virgil in Victorian classical contexts; 12. The triumph of idealism in Victorian classical studies; Index.

This volume of essays reflects research, teaching and writing carried out over more than twenty years. The essays cover an extremely wide spectrum, from the issues of secularization and cultural apostasy, to the relationship between science and religion, and the ancient world.