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Pious Frauds: ‘Honest Tricks’ and the Patterns of Anglican Devotional Thought in Richardson
Author(s) -
LATIMER BONNIE
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2009.00214.x
Subject(s) - virtue , lying , philosophy , literature , sociology , theology , art , medicine , radiology
This essay identifies a series of apparent deceptions by two of Richardson's iconic moral paragons, Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison. It uses early modern Anglican thought to argue that such deceptions are best seen as ‘lies’– but also that the same body of theology allows for ‘lying’ in certain cases. Drawing on a range of Anglican thought from this period, it identifies in this literature a fascination with using ‘indirect means’ to bring about the ends of virtue, and concludes that Richardson picks up on this intellectual thread in his staging of morally complex fictional scenarios.