Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660-1780

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Groundwork of Change
Eighteenth-Century Evolutionary Theory
Practical Awareness
The Chapters and a Definition
A Note on Notes
Part I: Threats to the Species: Madness, Discontent, and the Danger of Dissolution
1. Causation and Contexts of Hatred: Savage Beasts Mortal and Deadly
Conjuring Up Reasons: Original Sin, Fragile Connections, Church and State
Aristocratic Historiography: Advocacy and Resistance
Metaphorical Enhancements: Floods, Propagation, Legions, and Dutch Treats
2. Madness, Extirpation, and Defoe's Shortest Way withthe Dissenters
Madness
Root and Branch
Defoe's Shortest Way, Sacheverell's Political Union, and Religious Conflict
The Shortest Way: The Bible and Other Clues beyond the Obvious
Response and Judgment
Defoe as a Character of His Own Creation
Part II: Taking the Cure and Improving the Species: Sermons, Compulsion, and Methodists
3. The Thirtieth of January Sermon: From Exterminationto Inclusion
The Thirtieth of January Sermon and Royalist Law
The High Church Response and the Beginning of Change
Higher Church and Moderate Responses to the High Church Response
Raising the Decibels in a Lowered Church
State, Not Church
God's Hand, William's Hand, and the Divine Right of Government
Retrospective
4. ""Compel Them to Come In,"" Luke 14:23: From Persecution toPersuasion; Against Augustinian Compulsion
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes: Response and Rage
Contexts Changed and Augustine Charged
Happy Had His Works Not Been Preserved
Persuade Them to Come In
Adopt Men From All the Nations of the Earth: Equiano's Conversion
Methodism: From Antagonist to Relation
The Spreading Fog
Reforming the Reformation? Reforming Reform?
Grudging Acceptance
Humphry Clinker: Joining the Family
Part III: Evolutionary Reversion: The Gordon Riots, Return to Rage, and Reinventing a Cure
6. Déjà Vu All Over Again? The Gordon Riots; Bedlam Revisited, Restoration of Order, and a Trial on Trial
Repeal, No Popery, and the Gordon Riots: Destruction and the Puritan Redivivus
Renovating the Language of Cultural Regress
Church, State, and Political Causation
Strategies of Defense and Alternative Responses
""What Is to Depose the Sword?"": The Return to Order; Debate, Arrest, Trial, and Consequences
The Trial of Lord George Gordon for Treason, 1781
7. A Very Near Thing: State Terrorism, the Fury of the Aggrieved, and Incompatibility with the Safety of Millions
A River Too Far
The Trials of Lord George Gordon, 1786– 1787, and Excommunication
The Trials of Lord George Gordon, 1786– 1787: Libeling France and Britain
Aftermath: Flight, Conversion, and Sentence
True Colors: Robert Watson's Life of Lord George Gordon
8. Coping, Repairing, and Dickens' Barnaby Rudge
How to Cope? The World after the Gordon Riots
Dickens' Barnaby Rudge: To Point a Moral but Not Adorn a Tale; The Victorian Retrospective and Punishment by Neglect
Conclusion, Summary, Implications: A Brief Summary of a Long Book
Illustrating Evolution
Index

""... a watershed moment in our field.""