New Faith of The Victorian Period

Paper Summary:

A look at the revolutionary changes during the Victorian period. The author examines changes in religion, poetry and views of love and faith. The author discusses the change of love to a form of faith in Matthew Arnold?s "Dover Beach" and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Blessed Damozel".

From the Paper:

"In a time when Darwinian ideas and new technological breakthroughs were reinventing the concepts of reality, faith itself was sometimes hard to find in the Victorian Period. Poets of the time rejected the previous era of peace in nature and unquestioning praise of God, and the Victorian poetry gave images and concepts that were more troubling than the idealized ballads of the Romantic Period. As Tennyson wrote, "Byron is dead," and so, too, was the romanticized view of life that accompanied the poet. The age was saturated in questions of religion and the whereabouts of God, and many poets used this religious skepticism as a springboard for numerous celebrated poems. The Victorian Period was a time of creating poetry as means of redefining the human soul, and many efforts were made to redefine one's faith as well. To many poets of the Victorian Period, religious faith was all but dead, and love had emerged as the new faith."

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