Timothy Lang

The Victorians and the Stuart Heritage

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book explores what the Victorians said about the Stuart past, with particular emphasis on changing interpretations of Cromwell and the Puritans. It analyses in detail the historical writings of Henry Hallam, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, placing them in a context that stresses the importance of religious controversy for the nineteenth century. The book argues that the Victorians found the Stuart past problematic because they perceived a connection between the religious disputes of the seventeenth century and the sectarian discord of their own age. Cromwell and the Puritans became an acceptable part of the national past only as the English state lost its Anglican exclusiveness. The tendency to accommodate Cromwell and the Puritans, particularly in the work of Gardiner, thus reflected a process of nation building that sought to remove sectarian divisions and which reached its climax as the Victorian age came to its close.

Table of contents:
Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: politics, religion and history: David Hume and the Victorian debate; 1. Henry Hallam and early nineteenth-century Whiggism; 2. Thomas Babington Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy; 3. Puritanism and the ideology of dissent; 4. Samuel Rawson Gardiner and the search for national consensus; 5. Cromwell and the late Victorians; Epilogue: Beyond the Victorians.

This book explores how a group of nineteenth-century British historians came to terms with one of the formative periods in their nation's past - the seventeenth century. Included are well-known figures such as Macaulay and Carlyle, who are of interest to literary scholars as well as to historians, and more specialised writers such as Henry Hallam and S. R. Gardiner.

An exploration of how leading Victorian historians interpreted the Stuart past and the era of Cromwell.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. September 2011
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 561g
• ISBN-13: 9780521474641
• ISBN-10: 0521474647
• Artikelnr.: 21950131

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: politics, religion and history: David Hume and the Victorian debate
1. Henry Hallam and early nineteenth-century Whiggism
2. Thomas Babington Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy
3. Puritanism and the ideology of dissent
4. Samuel Rawson Gardiner and the search for national consensus
5. Cromwell and the late Victorians
Epilogue: beyond the Victorians
Index.