The English Cult of Literature: Devoted Readers, 1774-1880 by William R. McKelvy (review)

552 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE to the Duke of Venice's attempt, in The Merchant of Venice, to shame Shylock with comparisons to the alleged cruelty of "stubborn Turks and Tartars never traind," The infamous anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's play might seem almost indistinguishable from the usual assortment of religious fears and ethnic bigotries. Yetto his credit, Highley is careful not to collapse the relevant categories. He never suggests that Shakespeare's dramatic imagination is the same as Peter's polemical one-but, then, he hardly mentions Shakespeare at all. Still, Highley does make it clear that the vital imagination found on the Elizabethan stage exists in a world in which the imagination is also likely to be seized by religious controversy, and in which national identity is itself a complex imaginative act-sometimes reactionary, sometimes subversive, always mingling historical truth with fear and aspiration. But Highley never pursues this insight at any length, even though, I suspect, many contemporary scholars would find in it a wealth of possibilities. I find it disappointing that Highley does so little to explore, or even mention, some of the many ways that "writing the nation" might add to our understanding of more canonical early modern literature, or even imaginative literature in general. Surely, his highly nuanced approach could add something significant even to the vast scholarship on Spenser or Shakespeare who, with their complex explorations of power and nationality, also find themselves "writing the nation:' After all, the period's Catholic writing and anti-Catholic writing helps constitute not only a political imagination and a religious imagination but also a literary imagination. Their intersections pose the book's most fascinating-and least explored-questions. Perhaps they will become the topics of another book, or many others. More than anything else, Highley reminds us that this exhausting realm of scholarship is far from exhausted. Brian Conniff Radford University The English Cult of Literature: Devoted Readers, 1774-1880. By William R. McKelvy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-81392571 -4. Pp. 336. $45.00 cloth. In the English Cult ofLiterature: Devoted Readers, William R. McKelvyunsettles orthodoxies about the relationship of religion and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, chiefof which is the doctrine that "knock-kneed religion, circa 1800, yields the way to hale and hearty literature" (28). From Thomas Carlyle to Terry Eagleton, a long line of critics has claimed that a literary cult arose in England only as the sea of faith withdrew from the island's shores. McKelvy, however, has done the historical research to offer a countering and groundbreaking conclusion. Rather BOOK REVIEWS 553 than growing up in a space vacated by religion, the sacred authority ofliterature was strengthened by the resilient activity ofpriests and clerical figures, and consolidated by an equally persistent political movement for religious liberty. 'lhe English Cult of Literature therefore strengthens a burgeoning scholarly argument for the decisive role of religion in nineteenth-century culture. Yet Mckelvy's study stands out from existing contributions, especially two recent titles, Michael Wheeler's The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture (2006) and Mark Knight and Emma Mason's Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (2006). Unlike these works, Mckelvy's book is not a history of religious controversy that draws on literary evidence (Wheeler) or a survey of religious beliefs and practices as they affect imaginative literature (Knight and Mason). His book is distinguished by the way it situates familiar (e.g., George Eliot's Daniel Deronda [1876]) and more obscure works (e.g., Robert Lowth's Isaiah: A New Translation [1778J) within four developing contexts: religious history, as indicated by clerical culture and religious debate; literary history, as indicated by generic, aesthetic, philological, and historiographic developments; reading / book history, as indicated by conditions of publication and reception; and political history, as indicated by legislation. Densely argued and fluidly written, but often digressive, the central chapters of Mckelvy's revisionary history are best approached after having digested his framing argument in the introductory first chapter, "Orthodox Narratives of Literary Sacralization:' Here he explains his departure from previous scholarship, which has variously coordinated the waxing of literary authority with the waning of religion...