Baker, Joseph Ellis. The Novel and the Oxford
Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932): 88-100.
Baker argues that Kingsley’s hostility to the Oxford Movement was based on
a quite different view concerning the nature of man. Whereas the Oxford
Movement held that man's nature was essentially sinful, Kingsley, “of the
school of Rousseau”, believed that it was essentially good (88). Baker
reviews the novels of this “pugnacious Protestant” for anti-Catholic sentiments
(99). “Though Kingsley’s pictures of Tractarians are so obviously prejudiced
that it is hardly necessary to correct them, his comments help to reveal
the core of his own vigorous mind, and the setting of the Oxford Movement
within the framework of other mid-century ideas” (100).
Oxford
Movement (Tractarianism) ; Novels ;
Catholicism
; Religion
.
Barker, Charles. "Erotic Martyrdom: Kingsley's
Sexuality beyond Sex," Victorian Studies Vol. 44, No. 3 (Spring 2002):
465-488.
Charles Barker examines Kingsley’s great personal interest in sex and sexuality
as well as the treatment of these topics in his writings. He stresses that
Kingsley sanctified sex and that he fervently believed that temporal sex
without the promise of its continuation in afterlife was anathema. Barker
also rejects the theory that Kingsley’s bitter denunciation of Catholicism
and what he held was Catholics’ confusion over many sexual matters signified
a nascent homophobia. Rather, Kingsley excoriated the celibacy valorized by
Newman as a vilification of flesh-and-blood marriage which Kingsley considered
was a true path to God.
Sexuality; Catholicism ; Newman
Bertonneau, Thomas F. “Like Hypatia Before
the Mob: Desire, Resentment, and Sacrifice in The Bostonians (An Anthropoetics),”
Nineteenth-Century Literature Vol. 53, No. 1 (June 1998): 56-90.
Bertonneau disagrees with the conventional contemporary reading of the scene
in Hypatia where Hypatia is murdered by a Christian mob. Such
reading is that the mob is a true representation of Christianity and that
Kingsley is castigating the hypocrisy and brutality of the new religion.
Rather, Bertonneau argues, just because the crowd thinks of itself as Christian
and acts in the name of this religion, it does not mean that it is in fact
truly Christian. “The truth, in Kingsley’s scene, is that the sacrificial
impulse comes not from Jesus (not from Christianity) but from the mob, which
is motivated by passion, not by compassion . . . . The mob enacts
the very impulse, namely sacrifice, that Jesus would suspend” (89).
Hypatia;
Catholicism
; History
; Henry
James .
Buckton, Oliver S. “'An Unnatural State’:
Gender ‘Perversion,' and Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” Victorian
Studies Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer 1992): 359-383.
Buckton contends that Kingsley’s profound antipathy to Newman stemmed from
more than his belief in Newman’s dishonesty. Kingsley also disliked
Newman's embracing of Romanism and what he felt to be Newman's sexual ambiguity.
Moreover, Kingsley’s attitude, argues Buckton, represented opinions widespread
in Victorian society. “One is . . . justified in taking Kingsley’s views
on religious faith, sexual behavior, and gender roles (such as 'manliness')
as more broadly representative of mainstream British society, at the
time of their conflict, than were Newman’s” (379).
Newman
Controversy ; Sexuality
; Catholicism
.
Conacher, W. M. “Charles Kingsley,” Queen’s
Quarterly Vol. 45 (1938): 503-511.
Conacher presents a sketch of Kingsley’s life and works. He praises
the characterization in Hereward the Wake; it surpasses that of Bulwer
Lytton’s Harold and that of Scott’s Ivanhoe. While he
criticizes Kingsley’s anti-Catholic treatment in Westward Ho! as being
mere bigotry and not based on proper historical facts, he admires the novel’s
color and romance. Though Hypatia has matter for a masterpiece,
“haste, over-enthusiasm, and lack of artistry have spoiled it” (509). Alton
Locke is modern in its sympathy for the working classes and its political
views, while Yeast, though the work of a young author, is praised
for its “generous feeling” (510). Kingsley, according to Conacher,
“railed at John Bull in life and in letters and was essentially in the end
John Bull himself” (511).
Overview
; Novels
; Religion
; Catholicism.
Dawson, Carl. "Polemics: Charles Kingsley and
Alton Locke," in his Victorian Noon: English Literature in
1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979): 179-202.
Dawson provides an overview of Kingsley’s character, his social and religious
views, especially those on Roman Catholicism, and his involvement in and
his diverse attitudes towards socialism. He discusses Alton Locke
, “perhaps one of the oddest literary documents of nineteenth-century England”
(180), declaring that its recognition in modern times owes something to Kingsley’s
treatment being relevant to contemporary Marxist assessments of literature.
“Kingsley articulates the sense of waste in his protagonist’s life;
he equates Alton with the social upheavals of his age, setting him against
middle-class virtues and assumptions; and he creates in Alton a psychic battle
between social activism and pastoral escape”. In addition, “
Alton Locke could figure in the survey that Georg Lukács, makes
of the middling hero in nineteenth-century historical fiction” (201).
Overview
; Social
and Political Views ; Religion
; Catholicism
; Alton
Locke ; Yeast.
DeLaura, David J. “The Context of Browning’s
Painter Poems: Aesthetics, Polemics, Historics,” PMLA Vol. 95, No.
3 (May 1980): 367-388.
DeLaura contends that the neo-Catholic art thesis of Alexis François
Rio as set forth in his 1836 De la poésie chrétienne
is essential for an adequate interpretation of Robert Browning’s painter poems
of the 1840s and 1850s. He also discusses how Kingsley was earlier
influenced by Rio’s work and argues that Kingsley’s artistic views and his
rejection of the Rio thesis constituted an important source for Browning’s
artistic ideas. He examines the passage in Yeast where Kingsley
has Barnakill present a Protestant view of art and a repudiation of the Roman
Catholic approach to art. He also discusses Kingsley’s treatment in
Alton Locke where he “uses the context of painting to develop
the more positive aspect of the new Protestant aesthetic of realism” (377).
Moreover, DeLaura, in his examination of Kingley’s review of Jameson’s 1849
Sacred and Legendary Art, sees his antipathy to Rio’s Catholic
view of art to have a strong sexual basis. In this work his “tone of
intense leering and almost scurrilous derision . . . is a measure of how
deeply disturbing and threatening Kingsley found the new ‘ascetic’ rewriting
of art history” (377).
Browning
; Art ;Catholicism
; Sexuality
; Yeast
; Alton
Locke .
Engelhardt, Carol Marie. “Victorian Masculinity
and the Virgin Mary,” in Andrew Bradstock, Sean Gill, Anne Hogan, and Sue
Morgan (eds.) Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture (Basingstoke,
U.K.: Macmillan, 2000): 44-57.
In this article Engelhardt considers how the understanding of the Virgin Mary
of three Victorian clergymen, Kingsley, Edward Pusey and Frederick Faber,
was related to their view of contemporary masculine identity and, in particular,
how each used the Virgin Mary to define his own masculinity. Kingsley's
dislike of Mary was, as Engelhardy points out, understandable for one who
hated Catholicism. However, she also relates his antipathy to the power that
Catholics ascribe to Mary. Kingsley shared the common Victorian view
of the domesticity of women and that it was the role of females to inspire
men but that they themselves should not aspire to power. Engelhardt
also contends that Kingsley's hostile attitude to Mary was related to fears
about his own masculinity. Early in his life Kingsley himself
had felt a pull towards Catholicism, a religion he later came to view as
female-oriented and therefore unmanly. "It was no wonder, then, that Kingsley
felt compelled to reject vociferously the most feminine part of this allegedly
effeminate religion. Kingsley was not just denouncing Mary; he was
repudiating what he considered to be his own weakness and error in desiring
Rome" (47).
Virgin Mary
; Manliness
; Catholicism
; Yeast.
Fasick, Laura. "No Higher Love: Clerical Domesticity
in Kingsley and Eliot." Victorian Newsletter Vol. 48, No. 100 (2001):
1-5.
Fasick argues that two writers as different as Kingsley, an ordained Anglican
minister, and George Eliot, an agnostic, domesticated clergymen in their
fictional representation of them. Both writers, accepting the Victorian stress
on the domesticity of religion, transferred the priest’s most important realm
of action from public reform to that of domestic virtue. Moreover, Kingsley
and Eliot underscore the priest’s romantic and sexual life, especially when
fulfilled in marriage and parenthood, as an important aspect of his human
and moral development. Such development can never be enhanced by celibacy.
Catholicism
; Religion
; Sexuality
; George
Eliot ; Celibacy.
Fasick, Laura. “The Seduction of Celibacy: Threats
to Male Sexual Identity in Charles Kingsley’s Writings,” in Jay Losey and
William D. Brewer (eds.) Mapping Male Sexuality: Nineteenth Century England
( Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000): 215-232.
Fasick considers the long English tradition that strong sexual interest in
females is injurious to true manliness. However, she argues that a strong
basis for Kingsley’s anti-Catholic writings and his altercation with Newman
was his conviction that Roman Catholic celibacy rather than sexual indulgence
was frequently a source for effeminacy. Kingsley, an ardent advocate of marriage,
was convinced that sexual abstinence took away from man’s masculinity as
well as posed both physical and spiritual dangers. For Kingsley celibacy was
all too often an act of self indulgence rather than one of self denial.
Manliness;
Sexuality
; Celibacy
; Newman
; Catholicism
Fichter, Joseph H., S. J. “The Socialism
of a Protestant: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)” in his Roots of Change
(New York: Appleton-Century, 1939): 134-156.
Fichter reviews Kingsley’s life and principal works focusing on his social
and political thought. He is balanced in his assessment, pointing out
a number of Kingsley’s faults, prejudices, and illogicalities in addition
to his good qualities. With respect to Kingsley’s changing views and
specifically to his title of Christian Socialist, Fichter declares that “he
was no more thoroughgoing Socialist than he was thoroughgoing Christian”
(135). Fichter briefly reviews Kingsley’s condition of England novels
declaring Alton Locke to be “a tremendously effective book” (151)
and the autobiographical Yeast to be badly marred by Kingsley’s intense
anti-Catholic bigotry. Fichter concludes that “the work of Charles
Kingsley was on the whole a genuine contribution to the improvement of man’s
relation with man. His mistakes were the mistakes of every demagogue
to tread the earth, but the hand he had in rousing social interest in English
problems more than made up for them” (156).
Overview
; Christian
Socialism ; Social
and Political Views ; Catholicism
; Alton
Locke ; Yeast
.
FitzPatrick, P. J. “Newman and Kingsley,” in
David Nicholls and Fergus Kerr, OP (eds.) John Henry Newman: Reason, Rhetoric
and Romanticism (UK: The Bristol Press, 1991): 88-108.
FitzPatrick discusses Kingsley's charges against Newman and the latter's replies
to them. He considers that the charges were more substantial than generally
believed and that Newman's responses revealed "an uneasiness over evidence"
and a certain looseness with veracity.
Newman
Controversy ; Catholicism
.
FitzPatrick, P. J. “Newman’s Apologia
: Was Kingsley Right?,” in T. R. Wright, John Henry Newman: A Man for Our
Time? (Newcastle: Grevatt and Grevatt, 1983): 28-36.
FitzPatrick analyzes the Kingsley-Newman controversy and particularly the
charges laid by Kingsley against Newman’s veracity and Newman’s responses
to them. He contends that while Kingsley was unsubtle and perhaps unbalanced,
his charges were substantive and ones Newman found difficult to answer.
“. . . time and again, Newman’s replies are inadequate; and [Kingsley] did
point, however imperfectly, to deficiencies in Newman’s ways of thinking”
(28).
Newman
Controversy ; Catholicism
.
Griffin, John R. “Kingsley’s Attack on
Newman: An Essay in Social History,” Faith & Reason Vol. 4 (1978):
17-27.
Griffin dismisses two common interpretations for Kingsley’s attack on Newman,
first, that he was a bluff, enthusiastic, John Bull type of Protestant, totally
lacking in malice, and two, that he did not believe that Newman was a liar
but, rather, that he was guilty of unnatural attitudes towards marriage and
sex. On the contrary, Kingsley was indeed motivated by a belief that
Newman lied. Moreover, Griffin points to evidence from newspapers,
journals, and books and from views of individuals in Kingsley’s own circle,
for example Maurice and Froude, that this was a common long-standing belief
in England. Participating in this belief, “Kingsley’s failing was neither
intellectual nor sexual: it was moral, the fault of judging others” (24).
Newman
Controversy ; Catholicism
.
Houghton, Walter E. “The Issue Between
Kingsley and Newman,” Theology Today Vol. IV (April 1947): 81-101.
Houghton argues that the fundamental disagreement between Kingsley and Newman
was the elemental dichotomy between Protestant Liberalism and Christian Orthodoxy.
Though in many respects a conservative and a public enemy of those espousing
the liberal cause, in religion Kingsley followed the liberalism of the likes
of Maurice and Carlyle. While we read such thinkers to understand liberal
ideology, argues Houghton, we study Kingsley to comprehend Protestant Liberalism
in its actual practice.
Catholicism
; Newman
Controversy ; Newman, John
Henry ; Religion
; Protestant
Liberalism .
Jay, Elizabeth. Faith and Doubt in Victorian
Britain (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1986).
Jay briefly discusses Kingsley’s dislike of Roman Catholicism and Tractarianism.
Catholicism
; Oxford
Movement (Tractarianism) .
Kijinski, John L. “Charles Kingsley's Yeast
: Brotherhood and the Condition of England,” VIJ: Victorians Institute
Journal Vol. 13 (1985): 97-109.
In his analysis of the novel Yeast Kijinski declares that the novel
despite its "bland didacticism" is very representative of the period, the
hungry forties. He argues that the novel also provides a strong insight
into a commonly held ideological stance of the time, namely that the growing
antipathy between the haves and the have-nots might be improved without force,
unions, redistribution of wealth if only all social classes acted sympathetically
and humanely in the true belief that everyone is a member of the same common
family.
Yeast ; Social and
Political Novel ; Social
and Political Views ; Catholicism
.
Litvack, Leon B. “Callista, Martyrdom,
and the Early Christian Novel in the Victorian Age,” Nineteenth-Century
Contexts Vol. 17, No. 2 (1993): 159-173.
A primary goal of Hypatia, or, New Foes with an Old Face, according
to Litvack, was to question deeply held Roman Catholic principles and views
of history of such as Newman and Wiseman, authors themselves of martyrological
historical novels Callista (1855) and Fabiola (1854) respectively.
Kingsley throughout Hypatia, written in the early days of his growing
antagonism to Newman, disparages aspects of the Patristic age and especially
the 5th century when Christianity was the state religion. By depicting
the 5th century Church as corrupt and tyrannical, Kingsley was attacking the
contemporary English Roman Catholic Church which was rapidly growing in influence.
“Kingsley enjoins his readers to look to themselves for justification – not
to the past, in which he finds little support for his faith” (165).
Hypatia;
Catholicism
; Newman
;History
.
Loesberg, Jonathan. Fictions of Consciousness:
Mill, Newman, and the Reading of Victorian Prose (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1986).
Loesberg discusses the origin and development of the Kingsley-Newman controversy.
He contends that Newman essentially “slyly” baited Kingsley into making the
precise criticism that was the most appropriate for Newman to reply to.
It was not a simple matter of an innocent Newman replying to a strong bigoted
attack. “Still, he did no more than put Kingsley in a position in which Kingsley
already felt comfortable. Newman’s effort was not really to occupy
the firmest ground he could, but simply the most pertinent. Kingsley’s
original accusation was the most easily refutable but also the least resonant.
To make his defense polemical, his autobiography an expression of his philosophy,
Newman needed to confront the issues of consistency and honesty. To
bring the issues to the forefront, he did no more than nudge Kingsley in
the direction of making clear what he had already implied in the original
libel” (131).
Newman
Controversy ; Catholicism
.
Morris, Kevin L. “John Bull and the Scarlet Woman:
Charles Kingsley and Anti-Catholicism in Victorian Literature,” Recusant
History Vol. 23, No. 2 (October 1996): 190-218.
Morris provides a thorough analysis of Kingsley's often virulent anti-Catholicism,
discussing it in the context of other widespread contemporary anti-Catholic
writings and sentiments held by many of the age's prominent intellectuals
and writers. Morris also considers Newman's critique of anti-Catholic "Kingsleyism"
especially as expressed in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics
in England.
Catholicism
; Newman
.
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
.
Schiefelbein, Michael.
“'Blighted' by a 'Upas-Shadow': Catholicism’s Function for Kingsley in Westward
Ho!,” Victorian Newsletter Vol. 94 (Fall 1998): 10-17.
Schiefelbein examines Kingsley's severe characterizations
of Catholics in Westward Ho!, especially two of his keenest bete
noires, Catholics' worship of the Virgin Mary and Catholicism's embrace
of asceticism and condemnation of the flesh. Kingsley, advocate of muscular
Christianity and espouser of manliness, detested what he considered to be
effeminate "Mariolatry" which was responsible for weakness and womanishness
in society. He also condemned the asceticism of the Jesuits Parsons
and Campion which he held to be an unnatural rejection of God-given impulses.
They were "spiritual grotesques" (15). However, Schiefelbein also argues
that Kingsley reveals his own ascetic impulses and his attraction to monkish
ways in Westward Ho! and reconciles the opposite pulls of asceticism
and carnal and sexual nature. Schiefelbein concludes that while "one
may certainly object to the role Kingsley assigns to Catholicism . . . it
becomes an effective foil for enlightening his readers - and, very likely,
for reminding himself - of the dangers of Manicheanism" (16).
Westward
Ho! ; Religion
; Catholicism
; Virgin
Mary ; Muscular
Christianity ; Sexuality
; Manliness
.
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 .
Uffelman, Larry K. “Kingsley’s Hereward
the Wake: From Serial to Book,” Victorians Institute Journal Vol.
14 (1986): 147-156.
Kingsley, according to Uffelman, very carefully revised the text of his last
novel in its original serial form for its publication as a book. Published
first in the Protestant journal Good Words, Hereward displays throughout
Kingsley’s hatred for effete, feminine monasticism and by extension Roman
Catholicism. However, Uffelman shows that Kingsley as he made revisions
for publishing the novel in book form toned down some of his more venomous
passages “tempering his story to fit a different medium and to appeal to
the taste of a more liberal publisher," Macmillan (155).
Hereward
the Wake ; Macmillan's
; Catholicism
; Publication
.
Uffelman, Larry K., and P. G. Scott, “Kingsley's
Serial Novels: Yeast,” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter Vol.
IX, No. 4 (December 1976): 111-119.
Uffelman and Scott discuss the early publication history of Yeast which
first appeared anonymously in six monthly installments in Fraser’s Magazine
from July to December 1848 and which was later republished in volume format
in 1851. They pay particular attention to the revisions Kingsley made
in the volume text. In addition to tempering many phrases which might
have upset orthodox religious sensibilities, Kingsley also added much anti-Catholic
material in the 1851 book, especially in the sub-plot concerning Luke, the
Tractarian curate and Lancelot’s cousin. The other major revision involved
expanding the ‘discussion’ element in the last part of the novel where Lancelot
meets the prophet Barnakill. This tilts “the balance of the novel towards
the question of religious belief” (117). With respect to the diverse
revisions Uffelman and Scott declare that “The new and topical sub-plot devoted
to Luke’s conversion to Catholicism made the novel more abstract and theological,
as did also the expanded conversation with the prophet in the last chapter.
The minor revisions, however, suggest an interesting slight softening in
Kingsley’s attitudes to more orthodox religious earnestness, and show also
that Kingsley himself had become aware of some of the unevenness of plot
and tone which serial composition had encouraged in his first novel” (118-119).
Yeast;
Catholicism
; Religion
; Publication
.
Wheeler, Michael. The Old Enemies: Catholic
and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
Wheeler’s book analyzes the cultural and religious conflicts and divisions
between Catholics and Protestants in Britain from the Reformation through
the nineteenth century. Wheeler is particularly interested in how writers
and other intellectuals interpreted the religious debates. He considers Kingsley’s
views, especially as revealed in Hypatia and Westward Ho! A
major focus of Hypatia is the vehement criticism of Catholic martyrology.
Wheeler contends that though Kingsley in his role of theologian and scientist
was a seeker of truth, as a novelist and historian in Hypatia he was
more intent on distorting ecclesiastical history to support what he considered
a higher truth, the truth of Protestantism as against the lies of Catholicism.
Religion;
Catholicism;
Hypatia;
The Water-Babies.
Williams, Stanley. "'Yeast': A Victorian
Heresy," North American Review Vol. 212 (November 1920): 697-704.
Williams discusses Yeast, paying particular attention to the novel’s
characterization and such themes as antipathy to Roman Catholicism and the
espousal of Christian Socialism. Though he discerns distinct problems
with the novel, for example its lack of genus, he praises its pervasive sincerity
and Kingsley’s palpable ardor as well as its presentation of important Victorian
disputes and movements. While students of Victorian literature will
readily discern the problems of this “potpourri”, “they will understand the
Victorians better, and so think their reading worth while” (704).
Yeast;
Catholicism
; Christian
Socialism .
Williamson, James A. “Introduction” to Charles
Kingsley. Westward Ho! (London: Dent, 1960): 4-7.
In this short introduction Williamson discusses Kingsley as historian, declaring
that Kingsley’s Elizabethans are clearly Victorians. Williamson also mentions
Kingsley’s anti-Catholic animus.
Westward
Ho! ; History
; Catholicism.
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
.
Young, G. M. “Sophist and Swashbuckler.” 102-111
in Daylight and Champaign: Essays. London: Jonathan Cape, 1937.
Young discusses Kingsley’s controversy with Newman. Agreeing that Kingsley
was no match for the brilliance of Newman and that he was totally out-manoeuvered,
Young nevertheless contends that Kingsley in an admittedly “clumsy way” had
a certain right. “But if the public, or the modern reader, said ‘Never mind
all that: what we want to know is, when Dr. Newman or one of his pupils tells
us a thing, can we believe it as we should believe it if the old-fashioned
parson said it?’ I am afraid the upshot of the Apologia and its appendices
is No” (110).
Newman
Controversy ; Catholicism.
Zemka, Sue. Victorian
Testaments: The Bible, Christology, and Literary Authority in Early-Nineteenth-Century
British Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
Zemka discusses Kingsley's 1849 review of Anna
Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, the first of her four-part study
of medieval and Renaissance European art. It was a laudatory review and though
Kingsley displays his customary antipathy to Catholicism he agrees with Jameson's
view that English Protestant culture's best defense against the incursions
of Catholicism "is a cautious appropriation of Catholic culture's superior
sense of the beautiful" (106).
Art ;
Catholicism.
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