Anmerkungen:
Includes bibliographical references and index
Beschreibung:
Introduction : literary culture, the classical past, and the rise of Restoration freethinking -- Libertine precursors. Rochester, Blount, and the faith of unbelief -- Behn, Fontenelle, and the cheats of revealed religion -- Skepticism and piety. Swift's Tale of a tub and the anthropology of religion -- Suspending disbelief : Swift, credulity, and the pious fraud -- Conclusion : Pope's "Essay on man" and the afterlife of English freethinking