Muscular Christianity
Subtitle: embodying the Victorian Age
By: edited by Donald E. Hall.
Contributors: Hall, Donald E. 1960-
Series: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ;; 2
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: English prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Masculinity in literature; Christianity and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century; Men in literature; Sex role in literature; Body, Human, in literature; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 19th century
Description: Muscular Christianity was an important religious, literary, and social movement of the mid-nineteenth century. This volume draws on recent developments in culture and gender theory to reveal ideological links between Muscular Christianity and the work of novelists and essayists, including Kingsley, Emerson, Dickens, Hughes, MacDonald, and Pater, and to explore the use of images of hyper-masculinised male bodies to represent social as well as physical ideals. Muscular Christianity argues that the ideologies of the movement were extreme versions of common cultural conceptions, and that anxieties evident in Muscular Christian texts, often manifested through images of the body as a site of socio-political conflict, were pervasive throughout society. Throughout, Muscular Christianity is shown to be at the heart of issues of gender, class, and national identity in the Victorian age.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.