Radical Steele
Popular Politics and the Limits of Authority
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10063442 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ashley Marshall (0000-0002-6018-9779, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 338-365 |
| Publication date | 2019-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/jbr.2018.180 |
| OpenAlex | W2944246760 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
In modern critical imagination, Richard Steele is almost always seen as Joseph Addison's friend and collaborator, as half of the periodical essay-writing team devoted to the promotion of civility, urbanity, and a moral and well-mannered lifestyle. Scholars focus almost exclusively on the Tatler , the Spectator , and Steele's sentimental drama, The Conscious Lovers (1722), virtually ignoring his substantial canon of party journalism and pamphlets. Partly because of Steele's bitter and extensive quarrel with Jonathan Swift—or because most scholars assume that Swift got the best of him—he is now rarely taken seriously as a political player in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England. This essay focuses on Steele the party writer—and especially on his attitude toward religio-political authority and the sanctity of vox populi . Though Steele is now described as (like Addison) “not so enthusiastic about the potential for public politics,” he was for excellent reasons regarded by contemporaries as a writer not only trying to politicize the people but actually succeeding in doing so. This essay attempts to recontextualize Steele's polemical contributions; he has been read alongside Addison and other Whig wits, but he rarely figures in discussions of the history of political ideas in early eighteenth-century England, in discussions of debates about authority, resistance, and the nature of obligation, about public religion and liberty of conscience, the political implications of heterodoxy, and the use of reason as a challenge to dogmatic clerical authority
Art · Heterodoxy · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought
The sense of the people
John Locke
The Letters Of Joseph Addison
The Christian Monitors
Sir Richard Steele, M. P
The Letters of Joseph Addison
Captain Steele
The Peerage Bill of 1719
Liberty and Libel
A Political Biography of Richard Steele
Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian London
Religion's Safe, with Priestcraft is the War
Captain Steele
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |