A ‘Fiction of the Mind’: Imagination and Idolatry in Early Modern England

IF 1.8 1区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY Past & Present Pub Date : 2022-10-31 DOI:10.1093/pastj/gtac034
Barret Reiter
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Abstract

This chapter examines the conceptualization of Catholic liturgical practices within the Protestant anti-Catholic polemics of early modern England. I argue that, insofar as Protestants typically glossed such practices as ‘idolatry’, and thus, as the worship of a false god, Protestants explicitly accused Catholics of falling victim to the deceptive tendencies of their imaginations. Hence, for English Protestants, Catholics were responsible for transforming the good news of the Gospel into a mere fiction of their own making. More than a mere rhetorical posture — though of course it was also that — it is here argued that Protestant anti-Catholic polemic encodes a more generalized anxiety about the role of imagination within religious, social and political life, and thus serves as a microcosm of larger-scale transformations within the intellectual and political discourse of early modern England. Most obviously, the emphasis on the imagination, in particular within Protestant polemics, indicates a new context into which traditional scholastic psychological categories were forced in order to accommodate confessional differentiation and the new political realities of a post-Reformation world. Thus, by understanding just what Protestant polemicists meant by fictions, we can open up deeper continuities across the intellectual and political discourse of the period.
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“心灵的虚构”:近代早期英格兰的想象与偶像崇拜
本章考察了近代早期英格兰新教反天主教论战中天主教礼仪实践的概念化。我认为,就新教徒通常将这种做法粉饰为“偶像崇拜”,因此,作为对假神的崇拜,新教徒明确指责天主教徒成为他们想象的欺骗倾向的受害者。因此,对于英国新教徒来说,天主教徒有责任将福音的好消息转变为他们自己编造的故事。这不仅仅是一种修辞上的姿态——当然,这也是一种姿态——本书认为新教反天主教的论战编码了一种更广泛的焦虑,即想象在宗教、社会和政治生活中的作用,因此,它是近代早期英格兰知识分子和政治话语中更大规模转变的一个缩影。最明显的是,对想象力的强调,特别是在新教的辩论中,表明了一个新的背景,传统的学术心理学范畴被迫进入其中,以适应宗教改革后世界的忏悔差异和新的政治现实。因此,通过理解新教辩论家对小说的理解,我们可以在这一时期的思想和政治话语中开辟更深层次的连续性。
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来源期刊
Past & Present
Past & Present Multiple-
CiteScore
2.80
自引率
5.60%
发文量
49
期刊介绍: Founded in 1952, Past & Present is widely acknowledged to be the liveliest and most stimulating historical journal in the English-speaking world. The journal offers: •A wide variety of scholarly and original articles on historical, social and cultural change in all parts of the world. •Four issues a year, each containing five or six major articles plus occasional debates and review essays. •Challenging work by young historians as well as seminal articles by internationally regarded scholars. •A range of articles that appeal to specialists and non-specialists, and communicate the results of the most recent historical research in a readable and lively form. •A forum for debate, encouraging productive controversy.
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