The Altar at Home: Sentimentalism and Religion in the American Nineteenth Century

FAIN: FT-57811-10

Claudia Stokes
Trinity University (San Antonio, TX 78212-7201)

The Altar at Home: Sentimentalism and Religion in the American Nineteenth Century examines the engagement of literary sentimentalism in American religious discourse and life of the nineteenth century. A widely popular literary movement of the mid-century, sentimentalism narrated for young female readers the benefits of devout Christian piety, and this book project examines the specific doctrinal contexts that underlay the religious ideals, practices, and beliefs advocated by sentimental writers. An NEH Summer Stipend would support, in particular, the writing of this book's fourth chapter, which argues that the hymn was a central genre of literary sentimentalism, one favored by such major writers as Alcott, Sigourney, and Stowe. By examining how these hymns evidence the explicit religious engagement, aspirations, and reach of sentimental writers, this chapter seeks to restore this devotional form to its rightful place in the sentimental canon.

Associated Products

The Altar at Home: Sentimental Literature and Nineteenth-Century American Religion. (Book)
Title: The Altar at Home: Sentimental Literature and Nineteenth-Century American Religion.
Author: Claudia Stokes
Editor: Jerome Singerman
Abstract: Displays of devout religious faith are very much in evidence in nineteenth-century sentimental novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and Little Women, but the precise theological nature of this piety has been little examined. In the first dedicated study of the religious contents of sentimental literature, Claudia Stokes counters the long-standing characterization of sentimental piety as blandly nondescript and demonstrates that these works were in fact groundbreaking, assertive, and highly specific in their theological recommendations and endorsements. The Altar at Home explores the many religious contexts and contents of sentimental literature of the American nineteenth century, from the growth of Methodism in the Second Great Awakening and popular millennialism to the developing theologies of Mormonism and Christian Science. Through analysis of numerous contemporary religious debates, Stokes demonstrates how sentimental writers, rather than offering simple depictions of domesticity, instead manipulated these scenes to advocate for divergent new beliefs and bolster their own religious authority. On the one hand, the comforting rhetoric of domesticity provided a subtle cover for sentimental writers to advance controversial new beliefs, practices, and causes such as Methodism, revivalism, feminist theology, and even the legitimacy of female clergy. On the other hand, sentimentality enabled women writers to bolster and affirm their own suitability for positions of public religious leadership, thereby violating the same domestic enclosure lauded by the texts. The Altar at Home offers a fascinating new historical perspective on the dynamic role sentimental literature played in the development of innumerable new religious movements and practices, many of which remain popular today.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15292.html
Primary URL Description: Site of publisher
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: ISBN 978-0-812
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Honorable Mention, Book Prize
Date: 11/6/2015
Organization: Society for the Study of American Women Writers

“My Kingdom: Sentimentalism and the Refinement of Hymnody.” ESQ 58.3 (3rd quarter, 2012): 294-337. (Article)
Title: “My Kingdom: Sentimentalism and the Refinement of Hymnody.” ESQ 58.3 (3rd quarter, 2012): 294-337.
Author: Claudia Stokes
Abstract: This essay examines the rise of hymns in the United States in the nineteenth century, analyzing the central role of American women writers in enabling this cultural shift. As this essay argues, women writers used their moral authority to offer public reassurances of the respectability of this long-suspect form, and hymns, in turn, provided a public medium for women to assume religious authority otherwise denied to them. This essay investigates the centrality of hymns in such best-selling novels as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it likewise demonstrates the popularity of the hymn among sentimental women writers.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/498621
Primary URL Description: Project Muse
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: ESQ
Publisher: ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance

---