Bradstock, Andrew. “'A Man of God is a Holy
Man': Spurgeon, Luther and 'Holy Boldness',” in Andrew Bradstock, Sean
Gill, Anne Hogan, and Sue Morgan (eds.) Masculinity and Spirituality
in Victorian Culture (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 2000): 209-225.
There are many references to Kingsley in this study of Charles Haddon
Spurgeon, particularly with respect to the two men's views on aspects of
manliness and muscular Christianity.
Spurgeon; Manliness;
Muscular
Christianity; Celibacy.
Brewer, Elizabeth. “Morris
and the ‘Kingsley Movement',” The Journal of the William Morris Society
Vol. IV, No. 2 (Summer 1980): 4-17.
Brewer examines the possible influence Kingsley’s works may have had
on Morris. She believes that it is very difficult to specify categorically
that there was a direct influence, though there are many instances where
the thought of both men overlapped. She discusses, among others, the attack
on celibacy and asceticism in The Saint’s Tragedy and Hypatia;
Kingsley’s stress on the importance of the environment in Yeast;
the socio-political ideas pervading Alton Locke; Kingsley’s belief
in the value of art, an awareness of one's heritage, and the pleasures
of rural life to the ordinary working man; the use of the dream device
in Alton Locke; the romance as well as the Norse element of Hypatia.
Morris, William;
Saint’s
Tragedy, The; Hypatia;
Alton
Locke; Westward Ho!; Yeast;
Celibacy;
Social
and Political Views.
Hawley, John C., S.J. “Newman
the Novelist,” America Vol. 163, No. 18 (Dec 8, 1990): 455-457.
Hawley contrasts the opinion of Kingsley and
Newman on marriage, sexuality, and celibacy especially as these are presented
in their literary works. "In Loss and Gain and Callista Newman
enshrined celibacy as a prophetic witness to the spiritual life.
Kingsley countered in his seven novels with his enshrinement of marriage
as the highest Christian vocation, and coupled his praise with portrayals
of celibate men and women who were fearful, untrustworthy and effininate"
(457).
Newman; Hypatia;
Saint's Tragedy; Sexuality; Celibacy.
Lankewish, Vincent A. “Love Among the Ruins:
The Catacombs, the Closet, and the Victorian ‘Early Christian’ Novel,”
Victorian
Literature and Culture Vol. 28, No. 2 (Sept 2000): 239-273.
Lankewish considers the Newman-Kingsley debate in the context of Kingsley's
antipathy to what he perceived as Catholics' unnatural attitude toward
sex, especially the Tractarian and Catholic depiction of Christ as spouse,
and their embrace of celibacy which Kingsley frequently regarded as effeminacy.
Kingsley, declares Lankewish, believed that it was only through such relations
as marriage, parenthood, and family that God could be truly known.
Lankewish also discusses Newman's possible homosexuality and Kingsley's
attitude to it. He argues that a consideration of the sexual context
of the Newman-Kingsley dispute provides a useful background to the study
of the Victorian Early Christian novel. He contends, in particular, "that
the Hypatia/Callista conflict not only anticipated the theological
debate that erupted between Kingsley and Newman in 1864, but foreshadowed
the gender and sexual tensions inherent within that debate as well.
Through the representation of the spiritual marriages between Christians
and Christ that Kingsley found so deplorable, Early Christian novels by
Wiseman, Newman, and Pater coopt the genre and transform it into a charged
site for the articulation of sexual difference and, most specifically in
Pater's case, of male-male desire" (252).
Newman Controversy;
Hypatia;
Sexuality;
Celibacy;
Religion.
Maynard, John. “Victorian Discourses on Sexuality
and Religion,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature Vol.
19, Nos 2 & 3 (1987): 61-69.
For Kingsley, according to Maynard, religion and sexuality are thoroughly
intermingled. His dislike of Newman stemmed in large part from his
strong aversion to religious celibacy. However, all forms of sexual
license for Kingsley was anathema.. The proper place for sexuality
was within marriage, with only one marriage in a lifetime. “Celibacy
is religion without sex; licentiousness, sex without religion. The
via media for Kingsley, married religious sexuality, allows one unified
discourse: married sexuality repairs the Fall and leads us from earth to
heaven, which is only more – and more intensely – of the same” (63).
Kingsley also depicts competing types of sexuality in certain of his writings.
For example, in Hypatia the struggle between the intellectual views
of different religious groups in 5th century Alexandria may be seen as
just as much a competition of opposite sexual styles. Similarly,
Westward
Ho! may be understood from the standpoint of opposite sexual religious
world views as the conflict “between chaste, successful Protestants and
lewd, unsuccessful Spanish Catholics” (64).
Religion; Sexuality;
Celibacy;
Hypatia;
Westward
Ho!.
Newsome. David. Godliness and Good Learning:
Four Studies on a Victorian Ideal (London: Cassell, 1961).
Mention of Kingsley occurs frequently in Newsome’s work. Newsome
is particularly interested in Kingsley’s notion of manliness which he views
as being very similar to the robustness, feistiness and vigorous vitality
of thumos, as opposed to the higher excellence of arete,
equated by Coleridge with manliness. Newsome also stresses that Kingsley,
the first to combine manliness with godliness, considered manliness to
be “an antidote to the poison of effeminacy – the most insidious weapon
of the Tractarians – which was sapping the vitality of the Anglican Church”
(207). Manliness for Kingsley was using to the full all the qualities
with which God has endowed men, including the sexual function. That
is why Roman Catholicism’s celibacy provided strong evidence of that religion’s
lack of manliness and its consequent falling away from appropriate godliness.
Manliness; Muscular
Christianity; Sexuality; Celibacy;
Catholicism.
Trevor, Meriol. Newman: Light in Winter
(London: Macmillan, 1962).
Trevor examines the Kingsley-Newman controversy paying particular attention
to Kingsley’s motives in instigating his attack. He considers that
Kingsley’s dislike of Newman stemmed from the early attraction Newman had
for his wife Fanny who intended to join Pusey’s sisterhood. Kingsley
had to win back his wife and depose Newman’s “authoritative image” (327).
Newman was quite unaware that to Kingsley there was a particularly personal
reason for linking virility with truth and cunning with virginity.
For Newman signified to Kingsley, who abhorred Catholic celibacy and the
notion of women choosing virginity, “a powerful father-figure withholding
desirable brides from ardent lovers by the mental bondage of the ideal
of celibacy”. This sexual connotation, according to Trevor, “explains
the passionate hatred evident on every page of the pamphlet in which he
set out to settle the score of twenty years” (328). Trevor also discusses
the reaction of the reviews and the periodicals to the controversy.
Newman Controversy;
Catholicism;
Sexuality;
Celibacy;
Reception
of Kingsley's Works.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Gains and Losses: Novels
of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (New York and London: Garland,
1977).
Wolff praises Hypatia’s “vivid and engaging prose style”, its
historical authenticity, the depiction of Hypatia, and its readability.
He writes that Kingsley had two main intentions in writing the novel. He
was criticizing Transcendentalism, held by Emerson and others, wishing
“to illustrate the dangers of the intellectual arrogance which falsely
persuaded individual human beings that they could seek and find their own
deity, ignoring the Church and religious tradition” (274). Also,
suspicious of the intellect and believing that the only path to faith was
through emotional commitment, Kingsley was attacking the Tractarians and
converts like Newman whom he held were “groping in the dead past for outworn
dogmas and practices” (275).
Hypatia;
Emerson;
Transcendentalism;
Catholicism;
Celibacy.
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