Copyright by Kirsten Anne Hall 2021 The Dissertation Committee for Kirsten Anne Hall certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Between Christ and Achilles: Christian Humanism in Crisis and a New Heroic Ideal in English Fiction, 1713-1813 Committee: Janine Barchas, Co-Supervisor Elizabeth Hedrick, Co-Supervisor Lance Bertelsen Ashley Marshall Martha Bowden Between Christ and Achilles: Christian Humanism in Crisis and a New Heroic Ideal in English Fiction, 1713-1813 by Kirsten Anne Hall Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2021 Acknowledgements I’m grateful, first, to Janine Barchas and Beth Hedrick for their encouragement and intellectual energy as my co-supervisors. At every stage, they championed my progress and challenged me to deepen and clarify my claims. I am also thankful for the mentorship of Lance Bertelsen as well as the support of my committee members outside of the University of Texas at Austin: Ashley Marshall and Martha Bowden. I would also like to express my gratitude to colleagues who offered to read parts of this project at different stages of the writing process: to James Bryant Reeves at Texas State University for his feedback on my Cato article, to Erik Dempsey at the University of Texas at Austin for helping me think through the intellectual background of my project and pointing me to Diogenes Laertius, and to Jocelyn Harris at the University of Otago for reading my Notes & Queries manuscript. Much of this project took shape during the Collegium Institute’s Genealogies of Modernity summer seminars at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve been grateful for the opportunities to collaborate with other scholars outside my discipline and for the friendships I formed there, especially with Terence and Jessica Sweeney, Donato Loia, and Owen Joyce-Coughlan. In my ongoing involvement with the GenMod Project, it’s been an immense privilege to work with a team, under the leadership of Ryan McDermott at the University of Pittsburgh, who is dedicated to the public-facing humanities. I know this dissertation has been greatly enriched by the chance to explore my ideas in podcasts and short articles for GenMod’s online journal. Fellowships awarded by the Department of English gave me necessary time to research, write, and revise the dissertation. It’s an honor to have been named a Decherd iv Fellow and to have had the opportunity to meet with Maureen and Robert Decherd to discuss my research. Lexi Pérez Allison, Sierra Senzaki, Kristin Foringer, and Kaitlyn Farrell have been the best writing group I could ask for. Without our writing sessions at Quack’s and our daily virtual meetings after the pandemic hit, I might still be languishing in the slough of writerly despond. To my community here in Austin do I also owe the success of this project. The fellowship I discovered at the Austin Institute and especially the friendship of Kevin and DeAnn Stuart, Marianna Orlandi, and Sneha Tharayil has heartened me during my time in graduate school. A special thanks also goes to my friends Bowden Herlin, Micah Heinz, and Zachary Larson not only for cheering me on, but also for their editorial assistance during the final stages of writing and revising. Finally, I wish to thank my parents, Robert and Maureen Hall, both for their unflagging support and for their enthusiastic reading of my dissertation in its entirety. v Abstract Between Christ and Achilles: Christian Humanism in Crisis and a New Heroic Ideal in English Fiction, 1713-1813 Kirsten Anne Hall, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2021 Supervisors: Janine Barchas and Elizabeth Hedrick This dissertation is about the disintegration of Renaissance Christian humanism in the Enlightenment and the literary efforts to reunite those fragments. The tension between the classical philosophical tradition and Christian theology is an old problem, one that up until the Renaissance had found compromise in Christian humanism. Under the changing historical conditions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, it resurfaced as a new problem that old solutions could no longer manage. In England, the so-called “latitudinarians,” English theologians of the Restoration whose ideas were to mark the mainstream of Anglican thought well into the 1800s, were among the last torchbearers of Christian humanism and yet largely responsible for its decline. The latitudinarian emphasis on ethics over doctrine, in the wake of the civil strife of the seventeenth century, rendered the ethically-based systems of ancient writers newly tempting, opening the gates to the rising tide of freethinkers, atheists, and deists who in their efforts to free morality from the shackles of religion, turned to classical moral philosophy not as a complement to but as a replacement for Christian moral teachings. vi This conflict was memorably articulated by Richard Steele at the start of the century when he asked in The Christian Hero, “Why is it that the Heathen struts and the Christian sneaks in our Imaginations?” While Steele’s concern that his contemporaries had become too enthralled with the ancient world at the expense of Christianity is echoed throughout the period, what makes Steele’s essay especially noteworthy is the way he carves out a place for literature’s crucial role in this philosophical and religious crisis. Hs rallying cry for “Elegant Pens” to take up the cause of Christianity and win back not just the minds, but the hearts of its readers by offering attractive and powerful Christian “heroes” is one, I argue, that prompts the response of early novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, and, later, Jane Austen. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix Chapter One: Introduction to Steele’s Crisis of Christian Humanism....................................... 1 Richard Steele’s The Christian Hero ....................................................................................... 3 Christian Humanism in Crisis ............................................................................................ 15 The Christian Hero in the Early Eighteenth-Century Novel .......................................... 39 Chapter Two: The Splendid Vices of Addison’s Cato................................................................ 52 Splendid Vices, Varnished Sins .......................................................................................... 62 Cato’s “Gentler Doom” ..................................................................................................... 73 The Eye of Cato .................................................................................................................. 83 Chapter Three: Morality A-la-Mode in Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison .............................. 89 From Virtu to Virtue ........................................................................................................ 102 Richardson and Homer Divide the Crown..................................................................... 138 Chapter Four: Metallurgical Satire in Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield .............................. 149 Chapter Five: The Austen Synthesis ......................................................................................... 183 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 199 viii List of Figures Figure 3.1: Bartolozzi Fan ...................................................................................................... 110 Figure 3.2: Fürstenberg Porcelain Teapot............................................................................. 110 Figure 3.3: Wedgwood Medallion .......................................................................................... 113 Figure 3.4: Wedgwood Plaque ............................................................................................... 113 Figure 3.5: Silk Waistcoat ....................................................................................................... 114 Figure 3.6: Benotti and Fanelli Cabinet ................................................................................. 118 Figure 3.7: Stowe Obelisk ...................................................................................................... 119 Figure 3.8: The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa .................................................................................... 125 Figure 3.9: Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord LeDespencer ................................................................. 126 Figure 3.10: The Beauties of Stow ................................................................................................ 128 Figure 3.11: The Choice of Hercules between Virtue and Pleasure ................................................... 145 Figure 4.1: The Sleepy Congregation ........................................................................................... 174 Figure 4.2: A Sleepy Congregation .............................................................................................. 174 Figure 4.3: Vicar and Moses ...................................................................................................... 176 Figure