Book of God

Colin Jager teaches English at Rutgers University.

• PrefaceIntroduction. Nature is the Book of GodChapter 1. The Argument Against Design from Deism to BlakeChapter Two. Arbitrary Acts of Mind: Natural Theology in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionChapter Three. Theory, Practice, and Anna BarbauldChapter Four. Natural Designs: William Paley, Immanuel Kant, and the Power of AnalogyChapter Five. Mansfield Park and the End of Natural TheologyChapter Six. Wordsworth: The Shape of AnalogyChapter Seven. Reading With a Worthy Eye: Secularization and EvilChapter Eight. Religion Three WaysAfterword. Intelligent Design and Religious Ignoramuses; or, the Difference between Theory and LiteratureEndnotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"An erudite, refreshing study of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concept of intentional design that rethinks the equation of romanticism, modernity, and secularization underwriting romantic studies for the last fifty years. The Book of God manages to be at once ambitious, deliberate, and nuanced in its interconnecting conceptions of philosophy and literary criticism." (Orrin Wang, University of Maryland) "The claim that God's existence can be inferred from the order and intricacy of the world has an ancient lineage. The Book of God explores the literary, philosophical, and theological inflection of this avowal in the context of encroaching secularism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. . . . It is a timely work, for the historical survey bears also on contemporary discussion. Some recent commentators have made much of the alleged incompatibly between science and religion. Colin Jager's sensitivity to the complexity of 'secularization' serves to subvert this binary thinking." (Times Literary Supplement)