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Part I: Tennyson and the Victorian Crisis of Faith

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Part I: Tennyson and the Victorian Crisis of Faith PRESSING FORWARD: ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIAN AGE by Louis A. Markos TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................................................................. iii Part I: Tennyson and the Victorian Crisis of Faith Chapter One: Introduction: From Romantic to Victorian........................................................................................... .2 Chapter Two: T. H. Huxley and the New Science........................................................................................................7 Chapter Three: Cardinal Newman: The Bumpy Road to Faith.................................................................................. 11 Chapter Four: Newman v. Huxley: On Authority and Education.............................................................................. 16 Chapter Five: John Stuart Mill: The Autobiography of a Steam-Engine ................................................................... 21 Chapter Six: John Stuart Mill: Crisis and Resolution .................................................................................................25 Chapter Seven: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: The Poem that Embodied its Age .......................................................... 30 Chapter Eight: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: A Beam in Darkness............................................................................... 35 Chapter Nine: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: From Romantic to Victorian.................................................................... 41 Chapter Ten: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: Crisis of Faith............................................................................................ 47 Chapter Eleven: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: Faith in Religion Restored ................................................................... 52 Chapter Twelve: Tennyson’s In Memoriam: Faith in Science Restored .................................................................... 58 Part II: Tennyson and the Victorian Spirit of Progress Chapter Thirteen: The Education of Alfred, Lord Tennyson .................................................................................... 64 Chapter Fourteen: The Isolated Poet: Tennyson the Romantic I...............................................................................69 Chapter Fifteen: The Dangers of Solipsism: Tennyson the Romantic II ................................................................... 75 Chapter Sixteen: Pressing Forward: Tennyson and the Victorian Spirit of Progress I .............................................. 80 Chapter Seventeen: Resisting Temptation: Tennyson and the Victorian Spirit of Progress II .................................. 86 Chapter Eighteen: Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus: Spiritual Critique of Progress............................................................91 Chapter Nineteen: Ruskin’s “The Nature of the Gothic”: Aesthetic Critique of Progress ........................................ 96 Chapter Twenty: Tennyson’s Angry Young Man: Maud and the Dark Side of Progress.......................................... 101 Chapter Twenty-One: Taming the Beast: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King I................................................................ 106 Chapter Twenty-Two: The Role of the Sacred: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King II ..................................................... 112 Chapter Twenty-Three: Matthew Arnold: Failed Romantic Poet ............................................................................. 117 Chapter Twenty-Four: Matthew Arnold: Victorian Prophet and Sage...................................................................... 123 Appendices Timeline ................................................................................................................................................................. 129 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................................. 132 Who’s Who ................................................................................................................................................................. 135 Annotated Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 140 Victorian Film Festival............................................................................................................................................... 144 ii PREFACE It is almost a commonplace for Humanities Professors to claim that the age they are teaching is very much like our own. This is not surprising since all professors hope to make what they teach relevant to the contemporary world that they and their students inhabit. Add to this the fact that human nature is more or less a constant and that the really big questions (Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose?) never change (though they may be temporarily eclipsed), and it becomes almost a fait accompli that they will find at least some parallels between the past age under study and that ever-fluctuating, hard-to-define present age that we call our own. Still, despite this ubiquitous practice, I feel no hesitation in asserting firmly that it is the Victorian Age, above all others, that is most like our own. The ancient Athenians, the Florentines of the Renaissance, and the 18th century Parisians may all stake their claims, but it is finally a group of 19th century, middle-class Londoners who were the first to face directly the challenges, confusions, and upheavals of the modern world. It is their struggles that are most like our own, and it is therefore their solutions (partial and tentative though they may be) that most demand our attention. The Victorians were the heirs of 2000 years of Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman culture, 200 years of skepticism and liberalism that rose up out of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, and a generation of swift developments in science, technology, and commerce that made all that came before seem stagnant and outdated. Their Romantic forbears could partly hold at bay the struggles and contradictions inherent in this triple heritage by looking both backward and inward, but such introspection and nostalgia could not last forever. Sooner or later Europe (and, through her, the world) would have to press forward to find a new integration that could usher us into the modern world without sacrificing all that makes us uniquely human. It will be the goal of this study to enter, alongside the Victorians, into these struggles, into their individual and collective crises of faith and into that vital spirit of progress that animated the age and helped to pull its inhabitants out of their crises into a fuller vision. In seeking to fulfil that goal, this book will survey and analyze the life and writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson in the context of the Victorian Age. Thus, though our focus will be on Tennyson’s poetry (about 2/3 of the chapters), we shall compare and contrast that poetry with the prose works of six Victorian essayists (or sages) whose lives and writings both embodied the vast range of Victorian values and ideals and represented a powerful (and influential) critique of those very values and ideals. In the first part of the book, Chapters 1-12 (Tennyson and the Victorian Crisis of Faith), our focus will be on how Tennyson (along with three of the sages) was challenged (intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually) by the new developments in science (particularly evolution and the age of the earth), by the growing Enlightenment focus on rationalism, materialism, and skepticism, and by a new pragmatic, utilitarian ethos that was sweeping the country. In the second part, Chapters 13-24 (Tennyson and the Victorian Spirit of Progress), we shall shift our focus to how Tennyson (in company with the other three sages) reacted to the optimistic, positivistic Victorian faith that, through technology, social planning, the free-market economy, and universal education, England could build a utopia of peace and plenty. Part I will begin with an introduction to the Victorian Age (Chapter 1) that will consider closely four key characteristics of the Victorian Age by contrasting it from the Romantic Age that preceded it, and a survey of the new developments in science (Chapter 2) as they were popularized by Darwin’s unofficial spokesman and “bulldog,” T. H. Huxley. Then, in Chapters iii 3-6, we shall study the autobiographies of two Victorian sages (Cardinal Newman and John Stuart Mill) who suffered intense crises of faith but who dealt with those crises in very different ways. In Chapter 4, we will set the conservative, Catholic Newman against the liberal, skeptical Huxley, and see how they advocated very different views on authority and education. Then, in Chapters 7-12, we shall turn our focus fully to Tennyson and consider his major work, In Memoriam, an epic poem that, more than any other work of the 19th century, embodied all of its Age’s struggles, griefs, and resolutions. We will see here how Tennyson suffered his own crisis of faith (sparked by the sudden death of his closest friend and soon-to-be brother-in-law, Arthur Hallam) and how, through that crisis, he was not only able to mature from a Romantic to a Victorian but was able to fashion a new relationship to religion and science that both reflected and shaped the new ethos of his Age. Part II will begin by stepping back slightly
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