Lexington Books
Pages: 270
Trim: 0 x 0
978-0-7391-1338-7 • Hardback • September 2006 • $109.00 • (£84.00)
978-0-7391-1339-4 • Paperback • September 2006 • $46.99 • (£36.00)
978-0-7391-6071-8 • eBook • September 2006 • $44.50 • (£34.00)
Lynn L. Sharp is associate professor of history at Whitman College.
Chapter 1 Introduction: Secularism and spirituality
Chapter 2 Romantic Reincarnation and Social Reform
Chapter 3 1850-1880: Building a Movement
Chapter 4 Progress of the Seance: Progress, Gender, Equality
Chapter 5 Struggles for Legitimacy: Science and Religion
Chapter 6 Spiritism, Occultism, Science: Meanings of Reincarnation in the Fin de Siecle
Chapter 7 Conclusion: Thoughts for Modern Spirits
Recommended.....
— D. A. Harvey
This fine study of French spiritism in the nineteenth century confirms a growing recognition by historians that various forms of modern religiosity survived the development of materialist critique of traditional religion. These movements, which Sharp deftly and judiciously surveys here, combined the humanist vision of a progressive and egalitarian society with a mystical faith in everyday miracles. It provides a more complex story about the growth of reason and the decline of religious observance than canbe told in the conventional discourse of the struggle between clericalism and anti-clericalism...
— Robert A. Nye