3 English radicalism in the 1650s
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Catie Gill
Abstract
This chapter is a survey of first generation Quaker attitudes towards unlearnedness. Quakers regarded learning as a demarcation between the godly who relied on inward learning and the ungodly who adopted a rational approach to knowledge. Their antihumanism even led them to consider spirituality a preferable attitude to scripturalism. The Quakers’ sufficiency of inward learning has been extensively researched by students of mid seventeenth-century sectarian radicalism. However, Catherine Gill’s contention in this essay is that the Quakers’ position on learning is not as clear and monolithic as appears first. The way Quakers described inward-learning changed from writer to writer and required justification which they expressed in a variety of writings. Catherine Gill draws upon conversion narratives, poetry and polemical tracts penned by Quakers to explain how nuanced their position was, a far cry from a monochrome episteme. Gill insists that the Quakers’ responses to criticism contribute to a better understanding of these radical voices.
Abstract
This chapter is a survey of first generation Quaker attitudes towards unlearnedness. Quakers regarded learning as a demarcation between the godly who relied on inward learning and the ungodly who adopted a rational approach to knowledge. Their antihumanism even led them to consider spirituality a preferable attitude to scripturalism. The Quakers’ sufficiency of inward learning has been extensively researched by students of mid seventeenth-century sectarian radicalism. However, Catherine Gill’s contention in this essay is that the Quakers’ position on learning is not as clear and monolithic as appears first. The way Quakers described inward-learning changed from writer to writer and required justification which they expressed in a variety of writings. Catherine Gill draws upon conversion narratives, poetry and polemical tracts penned by Quakers to explain how nuanced their position was, a far cry from a monochrome episteme. Gill insists that the Quakers’ responses to criticism contribute to a better understanding of these radical voices.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
PART I Radical language and themes
- 1 Community of goods 41
- 2 Thomas Paine’s democratic linguistic radicalism 60
- 3 English radicalism in the 1650s 80
-
PART II Radical exchanges and networks
- 4 Secular millenarianism as a radical utopian project in Shaftesbury 103
- 5 The diffusion and impact of Baron d’Holbach’s texts in Great Britain, 1765–1800 125
-
PART III Radical media and practices
- 6 The parliamentary context of political radicalism in the English revolution 151
- 7 Toasting and the diffusion of radical ideas, 1780–1832 170
-
PART IV Radical fiction and representation
- 8 Contesting the press-oppressors of the age 193
- 9 Ways of thinking, ways of writing 211
- 10 ‘The insane enthusiasm of the time’ 229
- Select bibliography 251
- Index 270
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
PART I Radical language and themes
- 1 Community of goods 41
- 2 Thomas Paine’s democratic linguistic radicalism 60
- 3 English radicalism in the 1650s 80
-
PART II Radical exchanges and networks
- 4 Secular millenarianism as a radical utopian project in Shaftesbury 103
- 5 The diffusion and impact of Baron d’Holbach’s texts in Great Britain, 1765–1800 125
-
PART III Radical media and practices
- 6 The parliamentary context of political radicalism in the English revolution 151
- 7 Toasting and the diffusion of radical ideas, 1780–1832 170
-
PART IV Radical fiction and representation
- 8 Contesting the press-oppressors of the age 193
- 9 Ways of thinking, ways of writing 211
- 10 ‘The insane enthusiasm of the time’ 229
- Select bibliography 251
- Index 270
