Wordsworth and Evolution in Victorian Literature

Wordsworth and Evolution in Victorian Literature

Author: Trenton B. Olsen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0429640641

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The influences of William Wordsworth’s writing and evolutionary theory—the nineteenth century’s two defining visions of nature—conflicted in the Victorian period. For Victorians, Wordsworthian nature was a caring source of inspiration and moral guidance, signaling humanity's divine origins and potential. Darwin’s nature, by contrast, appeared as an indifferent and amoral reminder of an evolutionary past that demanded participation in a brutal struggle for existence. Victorian authors like Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy grappled with these competing representations in their work. They turned to Wordsworth as an alternative or antidote to evolution, criticized and altered his poetry in response to Darwinism, and synthesized elements of each to propose their own modified theories. Darwin’s account of a material, evolutionary nature both threatened the Wordsworthian belief in nature’s transcendent value and made spiritual elevation seem more urgently necessary. Victorian authors used Wordsworth and Darwin to explore what form of transcendence, if any, could survive an evolutionary age, and reevaluated the purpose of literature in the process.


Book Synopsis Wordsworth and Evolution in Victorian Literature by : Trenton B. Olsen

Download or read book Wordsworth and Evolution in Victorian Literature written by Trenton B. Olsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The influences of William Wordsworth’s writing and evolutionary theory—the nineteenth century’s two defining visions of nature—conflicted in the Victorian period. For Victorians, Wordsworthian nature was a caring source of inspiration and moral guidance, signaling humanity's divine origins and potential. Darwin’s nature, by contrast, appeared as an indifferent and amoral reminder of an evolutionary past that demanded participation in a brutal struggle for existence. Victorian authors like Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy grappled with these competing representations in their work. They turned to Wordsworth as an alternative or antidote to evolution, criticized and altered his poetry in response to Darwinism, and synthesized elements of each to propose their own modified theories. Darwin’s account of a material, evolutionary nature both threatened the Wordsworthian belief in nature’s transcendent value and made spiritual elevation seem more urgently necessary. Victorian authors used Wordsworth and Darwin to explore what form of transcendence, if any, could survive an evolutionary age, and reevaluated the purpose of literature in the process.


Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics

Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics

Author: Charles Morris Lansley

Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781787071384

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This book argues that the Romantic movement influenced Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection. Given that Darwin has traditionally been placed within Victorian naturalism, these Romantic connections have often been overlooked. The book cleverly follows Darwin's narrative in a search for traces of history in both science and poetry.


Book Synopsis Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics by : Charles Morris Lansley

Download or read book Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics written by Charles Morris Lansley and published by Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the Romantic movement influenced Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection. Given that Darwin has traditionally been placed within Victorian naturalism, these Romantic connections have often been overlooked. The book cleverly follows Darwin's narrative in a search for traces of history in both science and poetry.


What the Victorians Made of Romanticism

What the Victorians Made of Romanticism

Author: Tom Mole

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0691202923

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This insightful and elegantly written book examines how the popular media of the Victorian era sustained and transformed the reputations of Romantic writers. Tom Mole provides a new reception history of Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth—one that moves beyond the punctual historicism of much recent criticism and the narrow horizons of previous reception histories. He attends instead to the material artifacts and cultural practices that remediated Romantic writers and their works amid shifting understandings of history, memory, and media. Mole scrutinizes Victorian efforts to canonize and commodify Romantic writers in a changed media ecology. He shows how illustrated books renovated Romantic writing, how preachers incorporated irreligious Romantics into their sermons, how new statues and memorials integrated Romantic writers into an emerging national pantheon, and how anthologies mediated their works to new generations. This ambitious study investigates a wide range of material objects Victorians made in response to Romantic writing—such as photographs, postcards, books, and collectibles—that in turn remade the public’s understanding of Romantic writers. Shedding new light on how Romantic authors were posthumously recruited to address later cultural concerns, What the Victorians Made of Romanticism reveals new histories of appropriation, remediation, and renewal that resonate in our own moment of media change, when once again the cultural products of the past seem in danger of being forgotten if they are not reimagined for new audiences.


Book Synopsis What the Victorians Made of Romanticism by : Tom Mole

Download or read book What the Victorians Made of Romanticism written by Tom Mole and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful and elegantly written book examines how the popular media of the Victorian era sustained and transformed the reputations of Romantic writers. Tom Mole provides a new reception history of Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth—one that moves beyond the punctual historicism of much recent criticism and the narrow horizons of previous reception histories. He attends instead to the material artifacts and cultural practices that remediated Romantic writers and their works amid shifting understandings of history, memory, and media. Mole scrutinizes Victorian efforts to canonize and commodify Romantic writers in a changed media ecology. He shows how illustrated books renovated Romantic writing, how preachers incorporated irreligious Romantics into their sermons, how new statues and memorials integrated Romantic writers into an emerging national pantheon, and how anthologies mediated their works to new generations. This ambitious study investigates a wide range of material objects Victorians made in response to Romantic writing—such as photographs, postcards, books, and collectibles—that in turn remade the public’s understanding of Romantic writers. Shedding new light on how Romantic authors were posthumously recruited to address later cultural concerns, What the Victorians Made of Romanticism reveals new histories of appropriation, remediation, and renewal that resonate in our own moment of media change, when once again the cultural products of the past seem in danger of being forgotten if they are not reimagined for new audiences.


Wordsworth and the Victorians

Wordsworth and the Victorians

Author: Stephen Gill

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13:

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Wordsworth and the Victorians tells the story of the flowering of Wordsworth's reputation and influence. As well as showing how poets and novelists such as Matthew Arnold and George Eliot transmitted the Wordsworthian spirit, Stephen Gill uses a mass of anecdotal and biographical material - the personal testimony of critics, scholars, publishers, and ordinary readers - to illustrate just what Wordsworth's poetry meant to his Victorian readers.


Book Synopsis Wordsworth and the Victorians by : Stephen Gill

Download or read book Wordsworth and the Victorians written by Stephen Gill and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wordsworth and the Victorians tells the story of the flowering of Wordsworth's reputation and influence. As well as showing how poets and novelists such as Matthew Arnold and George Eliot transmitted the Wordsworthian spirit, Stephen Gill uses a mass of anecdotal and biographical material - the personal testimony of critics, scholars, publishers, and ordinary readers - to illustrate just what Wordsworth's poetry meant to his Victorian readers.


The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture

The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture

Author: Roisín Laing

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published:

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 3031413822

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Book Synopsis The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture by : Roisín Laing

Download or read book The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture written by Roisín Laing and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination

Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination

Author: Denae Dyck

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-02-08

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 135033538X

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Examining the creative thought that arose in response to 19th-century religious controversies, this book demonstrates that the pressures exerted by historical methods of biblical scholarship prompted an imaginative recovery of wisdom literature. During the Victorian period, new approaches to the interpretation of sacred texts called into question traditional ideas about biblical inspiration, motivating literary transformations of inherited symbols, metaphors, and forms. Drawing on the theoretical work of Paul Ricoeur, Denae Dyck considers how Victorian writers from a variety of belief positions used wisdom literature to reframe their experiences of questioning, doubt, and uncertainty: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George MacDonald, George Eliot, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner. This study contributes to the reassessment of historical and contemporary narratives of secularization by calling attention to wisdom literature as a vital, distinctive genre that animated the search for meaning within an increasingly ideologically diverse world.


Book Synopsis Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination by : Denae Dyck

Download or read book Biblical Wisdom and the Victorian Literary Imagination written by Denae Dyck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-08 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the creative thought that arose in response to 19th-century religious controversies, this book demonstrates that the pressures exerted by historical methods of biblical scholarship prompted an imaginative recovery of wisdom literature. During the Victorian period, new approaches to the interpretation of sacred texts called into question traditional ideas about biblical inspiration, motivating literary transformations of inherited symbols, metaphors, and forms. Drawing on the theoretical work of Paul Ricoeur, Denae Dyck considers how Victorian writers from a variety of belief positions used wisdom literature to reframe their experiences of questioning, doubt, and uncertainty: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George MacDonald, George Eliot, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner. This study contributes to the reassessment of historical and contemporary narratives of secularization by calling attention to wisdom literature as a vital, distinctive genre that animated the search for meaning within an increasingly ideologically diverse world.


Victorian Literature

Victorian Literature

Author: Clement King Shorter

Publisher:

Published: 1897

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis Victorian Literature by : Clement King Shorter

Download or read book Victorian Literature written by Clement King Shorter and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Sacred Tears

Sacred Tears

Author: Fred Kaplan

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1480409812

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An absorbing study of the evolution of sentiment in Victorian life and literature What is sentimentality, and where did it come from? For acclaimed scholar and biographer Fred Kaplan, the seeds were planted by the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century. The Victorians gained from them a theory of human nature, a belief in the innateness of benevolent moral instincts; sentiment, in turn, emerged as a set of shared moral feelings in opposition to both scientific realism and the more ego-driven energies of Romanticism. Sacred Tears investigates the profound ways in which seminal writers Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Thomas Carlyle were influenced by the philosophies of David Hume and Adam Smith, and by novelists of the same period. Exploring sentiment in its original context—one often forgotten or overlooked—Kaplan’s study is a stimulating fusion of intellectual history and literary criticism, and holds no small importance for questions of art and morality as they exist today.


Book Synopsis Sacred Tears by : Fred Kaplan

Download or read book Sacred Tears written by Fred Kaplan and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An absorbing study of the evolution of sentiment in Victorian life and literature What is sentimentality, and where did it come from? For acclaimed scholar and biographer Fred Kaplan, the seeds were planted by the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century. The Victorians gained from them a theory of human nature, a belief in the innateness of benevolent moral instincts; sentiment, in turn, emerged as a set of shared moral feelings in opposition to both scientific realism and the more ego-driven energies of Romanticism. Sacred Tears investigates the profound ways in which seminal writers Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Thomas Carlyle were influenced by the philosophies of David Hume and Adam Smith, and by novelists of the same period. Exploring sentiment in its original context—one often forgotten or overlooked—Kaplan’s study is a stimulating fusion of intellectual history and literary criticism, and holds no small importance for questions of art and morality as they exist today.


Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Author: Robert M. Ryan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0191074667

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Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth is a study of the cultural connections between two of the nineteenth century's most influential figures, Charles Darwin and William Wordsworth. When Darwin presented On the Origin of Species, his reading public's affective response to the natural world had already been profoundly influenced by William Wordsworth. Wordsworth presented nature as benign, harmonious, a source of moral inspiration and spiritual blessing, and a medium through which one might enter into communion with the Divine. Long after his death, he continued to be revered throughout the English-speaking world, not only as a great poet, but as a theologian with a broader following than any prelate and an appeal that transcended or ignored sectarian differences. For believers and sceptics alike, Wordsworth's poetry offered a readily accessible and intellectually respectable counterweight to Darwin's vision of a material universe evolving by fixed laws in which Divinity played no discernible role and where concepts like beauty and harmony were material conditions to be explained in scientific terms. Wordsworth's theology of nature became for many readers a more effective counterforce to Darwin's ideas than Biblical orthodoxy, but it also provided an enriching context for the reception of evolutionary theory, aiding theists in their effort to reach an accommodation with the new science. As the nineteenth century's two most prominent theoreticians of nature's life, Wordsworth and Darwin competed for attention among those seeking to understand humanity's relationship with the natural world, and their disciples engaged in a productive, mutually transformative dialogue in which the poet's cultural authority influenced the way Darwin was received, and Darwinian science adjusted interpretation and evaluation of the poetry. Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth explores the broad cultural relationship between Wordsworth, Darwin, and their disciples, contextualising them within wider discussions about the relationship between religion and science in the nineteenth century.


Book Synopsis Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth by : Robert M. Ryan

Download or read book Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth written by Robert M. Ryan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth is a study of the cultural connections between two of the nineteenth century's most influential figures, Charles Darwin and William Wordsworth. When Darwin presented On the Origin of Species, his reading public's affective response to the natural world had already been profoundly influenced by William Wordsworth. Wordsworth presented nature as benign, harmonious, a source of moral inspiration and spiritual blessing, and a medium through which one might enter into communion with the Divine. Long after his death, he continued to be revered throughout the English-speaking world, not only as a great poet, but as a theologian with a broader following than any prelate and an appeal that transcended or ignored sectarian differences. For believers and sceptics alike, Wordsworth's poetry offered a readily accessible and intellectually respectable counterweight to Darwin's vision of a material universe evolving by fixed laws in which Divinity played no discernible role and where concepts like beauty and harmony were material conditions to be explained in scientific terms. Wordsworth's theology of nature became for many readers a more effective counterforce to Darwin's ideas than Biblical orthodoxy, but it also provided an enriching context for the reception of evolutionary theory, aiding theists in their effort to reach an accommodation with the new science. As the nineteenth century's two most prominent theoreticians of nature's life, Wordsworth and Darwin competed for attention among those seeking to understand humanity's relationship with the natural world, and their disciples engaged in a productive, mutually transformative dialogue in which the poet's cultural authority influenced the way Darwin was received, and Darwinian science adjusted interpretation and evaluation of the poetry. Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth explores the broad cultural relationship between Wordsworth, Darwin, and their disciples, contextualising them within wider discussions about the relationship between religion and science in the nineteenth century.


The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Author: Professor Michael R Page

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-05-28

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1409479218

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At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.


Book Synopsis The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells by : Professor Michael R Page

Download or read book The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells written by Professor Michael R Page and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.