Table of Contents

Introduction; Part 1 Clare’s Disorganized Religion: A Context For Belief; Chapter 1 ‘still I reverence the church’: Clare and the Established Faith; Chapter 2 ‘I have joind the Ranters’: Alternative Denominations and Groups; Chapter 3 ‘he sets his face against all mention of fairies’: ‘Alternative Beliefs’ and Evangelical Zeal; Chapter 4 ‘Learning is your only wealth’: Reading and Reasoning; Chapter 5 ‘faiths ’lumind scroll’: Clare and the Scriptures; Part 2 ‘I have reflected long on the subject’ Clare’s Subjective Faith; Chapter 6 ‘There is a language wrote on earth & sky / By Gods own pen’: The Sublime Experience of God; Chapter 7 ‘long evanish’d scene’: Eden and Eternity as Patterns for Faith; Chapter 8 ‘There is a cruelty in all’: Challenges to Faith; Chapter 9 ‘a power that governs with justice’: The Tenets of Clare’s Faith; conclusion Conclusion ‘Child Harold’;

About the Author

Sarah Houghton-Walker is based in the Faculty of English at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Reviews

'Houghton-Walker does have a pointed and significant criticism to make of Clare scholarship: that it 'ignores the less-than-concrete' so consistently it cannot recognize 'that vision can be both physical and metaphysical' (p. 169). This book helps redress that critical error by attending carefully and sympathetically to Clare's metaphysics, to the myriad ways in which he infuses the concrete world of nature with religious significance and powerfully presents his moments both of doubt and of transcendent faith.' English ’John Clare’s Religion promises to be a continuing influence in Clare studies for the foreseeable future. Houghton-Walker’s book, due to the depth and breadth of the research, also serves as an extremely useful explication of the varieties of religious practice in England in the early nineteenth-century.’ Romantic Textualities