Anti-Catholicism in the Eighteenth Century Novel

Scholarship on anti-Catholicism in England abounds for the eras surrounding the eighteenth century, but for the eighteenth century itself, it remains limited. Of the research that does examine this period, the majority concerning literature pinpoints satire, poetry, sermons, and treatises as the key literary products and/or perpetrators of anti-Catholicism in England, while discourse on the novel is lacking. More specifically, the relationship between the evolutions of both anti-Catholicism and the novel genre has not been explored. The purpose of this thesis is to begin a discussion of that relationship, and while I cannot perform a comprehensive analysis of anti-Catholicism and the eighteenth century novel as a whole, I am presenting three examples – within Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Inchbald’s A Simple Story, and Lewis’s The Monk – which establish distinct connections between the developments of both the novel form and anti-Catholic ideas, in the hopes of opening doors for further study in this area.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Laughridge, Carrie Butler

• eighteenth century

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/14722

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/14722