Hearing Things : Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

by Schmidt, Leigh Eric

• ISBN13: 9780674003033
• ISBN10: 0674003039
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

"Faith cometh by hearing"--so said Saint Paul, and devoted Christians from Augustine to Luther down to the present have placed particular emphasis on spiritual arts of listening. In quiet retreats for prayer, in the noisy exercises of Protestant revivalism, in the mystical pursuit of the voices of angels, Christians have listened for a divine call. But what happened when the ear tuned to God's voice found itself under the inspection of Enlightenment critics? This book takes us into the ensuing debate about "hearing things"--an intense, entertaining, even spectacular exchange over the auditory immediacy of popular Christian piety.The struggle was one of encyclopedic range, and Leigh Eric Schmidt conducts us through natural histories of the oracles, anatomies of the diseased ear, psychologies of the unsound mind, acoustic technologies (from speaking trumpets to talking machines), philosophical regimens for educating the senses, and rational recreations elaborated from natural magic, notably ventriloquism and speaking statues. Hearing Things enters this labyrinth--all the new disciplines and pleasures of the modern ear--to explore the fate of Christian listening during the Enlightenment and its aftermath.In Schmidt's analysis the reimagining of hearing was instrumental in constituting religion itself as an object of study and suspicion. The mystic's ear was hardly lost, but it was now marked deeply with imposture and illusion.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(14)
Hearing Loss	15	(23)
More Than Meets the Eye	16	(12)
Absences and Presences	28	(10)
Sound Christians	38	(40)
Extraordinary Calls	41	(6)
God's Oracles	47	(3)
Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Senses	50	(7)
``The Startled Ear of Night''	57	(8)
The Noises of Revival	65	(6)
``Take Heed, Therefore, How Ye Hear''	71	(7)
Oracles of Reason	78	(57)
Working the Oracle	82	(19)
Acoustics and Mechanization of the Oracular Voice	101	(24)
``Truth Changes from Day to Day--and so Do I''	125	(10)
How to Become a Ventriloquist	135	(64)
Vocal Artifice	138	(15)
Magic Shows	153	(11)
(Dis)Trusting the Ear	164	(4)
``Shivered into Pieces''	168	(11)
``The Diseased Ear'' and the Unsound Mind	179	(20)
Voices from Spirit-Land	199	(47)
Talking with Angels	202	(9)
Bodies, Spirits, Senses	211	(10)
Talking with Swedenborg	221	(9)
Of Tongue-Speaking and the Gifted Hearer	230	(7)
Sacramental Technologies	237	(9)
Epilogue	246	(7)
Notes	253	(54)
Index	307