Reverberations of Revolution: Sound, Politics and Religious Enthusiasm in the 1790s
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This essay examines the significance of sound in religion in the context of the British debate about the French Revolution. It analyses loyalist sermons and pamphlets to show that anxieties about plebeian noise exacerbated concerns about religious enthusiasm and its relationship to political radicalism. Accordingly, the acoustic aspects of worship became an issue in conservative propaganda, especially the writings of Anglican clergymen. By contrast, Christian reformers found the sound of enthusiastic religion a source of empowerment. Focusing on prophecies, hymns and sermons, this essay argues that a group of plebeian Dissenters, whose piety shaped their commitment to reform, attributed a revolutionary meaning to the sonic intensity of religious enthusiasm.
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Cultural and Social History
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21
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2
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DP130102788
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© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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Historical studies
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Denney, P, Reverberations of Revolution: Sound, Politics and Religious Enthusiasm in the 1790s, Cultural and Social History, 2024, 21 (2), pp. 229-247