Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature

Download or read book Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature written by Maureen Moran and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exotic, corrupt, and dangerous, Roman Catholicism functioned in the popular Victorian imagination as a highly sensationalized and implacably anti-English enemy. Maureen Moran’s lively study considers a wide range of key authors—including Charlotte Brontë, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, and George Eliot, as well as a number of non-canonical writers—to give a detailed account of the cultural tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Moran shows that rather than representing a traditional religious schism, the demonizing of Catholics resulted from secular fears over crime, sex, and violence.