Sacred culture: Religion and aesthetics in Barbauld, Blake, and the Shelleys

This project examines the role of religion in the cultural politics of the Romantic era. Though previous studies have explored the influence of radical, plebeian religion on Barbauld, Blake, and the Shelleys, they have not situated these Romantic writers' discourse within the broader field of cultural production that includes conservative religious discourse. By doing so, I unfold the pervasive connections between culture, religion, and aesthetics in the Romantic era. I demonstrate how conservative religious discourse of this era aestheticizes social power through an emphasis on manners and taste. Such religious discourse thus works to internalize dominant social values more effectively by making them appear less coercive. This study traces the way in which the presumably more radical religious discourses of Barbauld, Blake, and the Shelleys similarly aestheticize social power and advocate hegemonic values.; I begin this study by examining the rise of Anglican Evangelicalism in the 1790s. The Evangelicals' "religion of the heart," which aestheticizes social power by cultivating self-discipline and an internalized restraint, provides a context in which to understand the religious discourse of the Romantic authors. For example, Anna Barbauld's emphasis on the intimate connection between manners, taste, and religion also advocates the gentle influence of the aesthetic that provides internalized restraint. William Blake's religious aesthetics, by emphasizing the role of the sublime imagination, which he figures as the Divine Body of Jesus, promote an ideal aesthetic object that advances the universalizing aims of bourgeois ideology. For Percy Shelley, the religion of beauty that derives from his Hellenism becomes a means to mediate political power through the aesthetic, an attempt to ensure gradual, peaceful reform by providing a restraint on the lower classes that will prevent violent revolution. Finally, in The Last Man, Mary Shelley rejects the claim of Christianity as the means of civilization, but she instead advocates an aesthetic imperialism that promotes the goals of conservative religious discourse. The fictional plague that she unleashes in this novel reveals and normalizes a social order that is led by a cultural elite who conform to and promote the middle-class values that are cultivated by the aesthetic.