Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:27:24.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

DISENCHANTED RELIGION AND SECULAR ENCHANTMENT IN A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2015

Joshua Taft
Joshua Taft*
Affiliation:
University of Central Missouri
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Victorian age has long been considered a time of disenchantment. Beginning with Max Weber's seminal “Science as a Vocation,” secularization theory has argued that belief within modernity is marked by “rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world’” (155). In this account, modernization makes the “enchanted” world fall apart, changing it from a realm of “mysterious incalculable forces” into an empty space governed by nothing more than “technical means and calculations” (139). Religion, this narrative claims, inevitably fades away. It may attempt to survive disenchantment by downplaying its supernatural roots, but this rationalized religion nevertheless gives way to secularism. And although recent scholarship has challenged the assertion that the Victorian age simply marked the decline of faith, the disenchantment narrative remains a powerful one; even critics who dispute aspects of the theory acknowledge its force. Colin Jager's The Book of God, for instance, describes Weber's narrative of disenchantment as “a powerful account of the way in which science gradually demystifies the universe” (18), and George Levine's Darwin Loves You concedes that Weber's work, whatever its flaws, survives because it was “fashioned so powerfully and convincingly” (xiv).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 659 - 673
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Bal, Mieke. “Over-Writing as Un-Writing: Descriptions, World-Making, and Novelistic Time.” The Mieke Bal Reader. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. 96–145.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “The Reality Effect.” The Rustle of Language. Trans. Howard, Richard. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. 141–48.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilgrami, Akeel. “Critical Response II: Reply to Bruce Robbins's ‘Not Without Reason’.” Critical Inquiry 33.3 (Spring 2007): 641–49. JSTOR. Web. 21 Aug. 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilgrami, Akeel. “What is Enchantment?” Varieties of Secularism in A Secular Age. Ed. Warner, Michael, et al.Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010. 145–65.Google Scholar
Bowen, John. Other Dickens. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Butler, Martin. “Courtly Negotiations.” The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque. Ed. Bevington, David and Holbrook, Peter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 20–40.Google Scholar
Childers, Joseph W. “So, This is Christmas.” Contemporary Dickens. Ed. Gillooly, Eileen and David, Deirdre. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2009. 113–30.Google Scholar
Collins, Philip. Dickens: The Critical Heritage. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Valentine. “Dickens and Christianity.” A Companion to Charles Dickens. Ed. Paroissien, David. Malden: Blackwell, 2008. 255–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. “The Life of Our Lord.” Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. London: J. M. Dent, 1995. 441–74.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz. London: Penguin, 1995.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Freedgood, Elaine. “Commodity Criticism and Victorian Thing Culture: The Case of Dickens.” Contemporary Dickens. Ed. Gillooly, Eileen and David, Deirdre. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2009. 152–68.Google Scholar
Friedman, Stanley. Dickens's Fiction: Tapestries of Conscience. New York: AMS, 2003.Google Scholar
Hancher, Michael. “Grafting A Christmas Carol.” SEL 48.4 (Autumn 2008): 813–27. ProQuest. Web. 21 Aug. 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, Barbara. The Moral Art of Dickens. London: Athlone, 1970.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Audrey. Scenes of Sympathy: Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Jager, Colin. The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007.Google Scholar
Langbauer, Laurie. “Ethics and Theory: Suffering Children in Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Le Guin.” ELH 75.1 (Spring 2008): 89–108. ProQuest. Web. 21 Aug. 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaPorte, Charles. Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2011.Google Scholar
Ledger, Sally. Dickens and the Popular Radical Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Levine, George. Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-Enchantment of the World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006.Google Scholar
McKelvy, William. The English Cult of Literature: Devoted Readers, 1774–1880. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2007.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. “The Genres of A Christmas Carol.” Dickensian 89.3 (Winter 1993): 193–206.Google Scholar
Orwell, George. “Charles Dickens.” Essays. London: Penguin, 2000. 35–78.Google Scholar
Saint-Amour, Paul K. “‘Christmas Yet to Come’: Hospitality, Futurity, the Carol, and ‘The Dead”.” Representations 98.1 (Spring 2007): 93–117. JSTOR. Web. 21 Aug. 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Belknap P, 2007.Google Scholar
Walder, Dennis. Dickens and Religion. London: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
Wallis, Roy, and Bruce, Steve. “Secularization: The Orthodox Model.” Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis. Ed. Bruce, Steve. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1992. 8–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Ed. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright. New York: Oxford UP, 1946. 129–56.Google Scholar