Victorian Era: Faith As Seen
Through Poetry
Session Four:
Christ, God, and Us
January 31, 2016
Vince Tollers
University Presbyterian Church
January-February, 2016
Monarch and Events
Victoria: 1937-1901
1830–48: stressful growth--first
railways and Reform Parliament
1848–70: prosperity, optimism, and
stability
1870–1901: breakdown of internal
and external compromises
Edward VII: 1901-10
1901-19 modernism meets
indolence and indifference
George V: 1910-36
WWI (1914-19) Old World ends
Series on Church Website
• http://upcch.org/adult-education/
– Weekly, following session
– Google internet for poems and more information
– Bibliography after final session
Scheduled Topics
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January 3
January 10
January 17
January 31
• February 7
• February 14
Introduction and Change
Science and Industrialism
Education and religion
Christ, God, and us in the
universe
Sense of self
Romance/love
(St. Valentine’s Day)
Today: Reforms in Religion and Art
• Humanizing Jesus
– Church of England/Anglican Reform
• Protestant/Dissenter Reform
– Quakers
– Wesley/Methodists/Evangelicalism
– Growth of hymn singing that show new views of
Jesus
• Anglo-Catholic and Catholic Poets
19th C Balance: “Function of Art?”
Horace’s
“To Teach
• Meter-making argument
(Emerson)
– Philosophical
– Art for society’s sake
• To teach: enhanced
universal lessons
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Public/general view
Hymns
Pragmatic/realistic
Worldly
To Delight”
• Rhythmical creation of
beauty (Poe)
– Aesthetic
– Art for art’s sake
• To delight: experiences
can’t be reduced to plots
and themes
– Private, personal view
– Idealistic
– Magical
Humanizing Jesus in 19th C
• German Protestant theologian: D R Strauss.
Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus) (1835)
• Trans. by George Eliot (1846)
• Separates Jesus the man from the Christian faith
• Christ as historical figure: gospel miracles about
Jesus are myths
– Rationalism generally supported
• Jesus Seminar (Marcus Borg, etc. modern adherents)
– “supernaturalists” opposed
• Bible is accurate: historically and spiritually
Anglican Reforms (1833-41)
• Oxford Movement
– Newman and 12 others write 90 Tracts for the Times
• Purity of early church
• Tied to gothic architectural revival
• Newman converts to Catholicism
– First sees C of E as the middle way
– Converts to Catholicism
• As Provost of Dublin University, writes Ideas
Dissenter/Non-Conformists Reform
• Rich tradition of 18th19th C hymns and
poetry
• Quakers
• Evangelicals/
fundamentalists
• Methodists
John Wesley in St. Paul’s Cathedral Garden
Quakers or Religious Society of Friends
• After 1689 Toleration Act, grew in northern UK
• 19th C, central to social justice and equality
– Equal rights for women
– Prison reform
– Assistance to poor
– Abolition of slavery
John Wesley (1703–91)
Non-Conformist Reformer
The 2nd Great Awakening was led by the Wesley
brothers and Whitfield in the UK and US
The Holy Club met in the Oxford chapel.
From there, the Wesley brothers sought
reform with the C of E before the schism
Evangelical Tenets
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The inherent sinfulness of man
Religious conversion (missions, etc.)
Atonement
Activism (social justice)
Devotion to the Bible
God's providence
The belief in an eternal life after death
Wesley: Grace Couched in Meter-Making Argument
Charles Wesley (1707-88)
wrote over 5,500 hymns
including And Can It Be
That I Should Gain?, O for
a Thousand Tongues to
Sing, and Hark! the Herald
Angels Sing. We have 13
of his hymns in Glory to
God.
Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and king,
The triumphs of His grace!
He breaks the pow’r of canceled sin,
He sets the pris’ner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.
Reformed Hymns Largely Victorian
Shift from 18th C rationalism and focus on God
the creator to Jesus the man who saves us by
grace and calls for living out our faith in
gratitude and with the Golden Rule.
In 2015, about a third of hymns sung at UPC
were composed 1750-1900.
Amazing Grace (1789)
John Newton
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd!
Catherine Winkworth (1827-78)
O Lord, How Shall I Meet You, how welcome you aright?
Your people long to greet you, my hope, my heart’s delight!
O kindle, Lord most holy, a lamp within my breast,
To do in spirit lowly all that may please you best.
…your thirst for my salvation procured my liberty
….you embrace… our lost and fallen race.
You come, O lord with gladness, in mercy and good-will….
Anglo-Catholic and Catholic Poets
• Influence of John Donne and other 17th C
metaphysical poets
• Francis Thompson
• Christina Rossetti
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
19th C Balance: “What is poetry?”
Horace’s “To Teach and To Delight”
• Meter-making argument
(Emerson)
– Philosophical
– Art for society’s sake
• Teaches: enhanced
universal lessons
–
–
–
–
Public/general view
Hymns
Pragmatic/realistic
Worldly
• Rhythmical creation of
beauty (Poe)
– Aesthetic
– Art for art’s sake
• Delights: experiences that
can’t be reduced to plots
and themes
– Private, personal view
– Idealistic
– Magical
Iconography in A-C and Catholic Poetry
• Realists depicted the world concretely
– A photographically-accurate tree is a tree
• Aesthetics, after the 1850s, showed the visible
tree as a symbol of something behind it
– See the spiritual, metaphysical world interwined
with the physical
Aesthetic Characteristics
• Vividly shows rather than tells a story in
pictures/icons/language
– MacLeish
A poem should not mean
But be.
– Widely illustrated
• Wide use of the Bible and classical myths
• Personal relationship with Christ
• Christ offers grace to the unworthy (like
evangelicals)
John Donne (1572–1631)
• Renaissance Anglican
metaphysical poet
• Victorians rediscovered
• T.S. Eliot and others add
Hopkins and Dickinson
• Complicated and witty
• His “Batter My Heart”
forerunner to Anglo-Catholic
and Catholic poets
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857. Realism
Symbolism
in the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood School
I Am the Light of the World (1854)
Holman Hunt (1827–1910)
Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I
stand at the door and knock;
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
• Started in 1848
• Christina, William and Dante
Rossetti, Holman Hunt, John
Everett Millais, etc.
• Follow nature; reject surface
classicism of Reynolds
– Use biblical and classical subjects
Painting: symbols of bat, torch,
white rose, and pomegranate
Proserpine, by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti
Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
• Aesthetic Catholic poet
The Hound of Heaven (1893)
"`Can anyone hide in secret places
so that I cannot see him?' declares the
Lord. `Do not I fill both heaven and
earth?' declares the Lord." (Jer 23:24).
• C.S. Lewis had similar experience.
(see handout)
Christina Rossetti (1830-94)
• Anglo-Catholic
• Romantic, devotional, and children's poems
• Noted poems
– “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” (hymn)
– “Remember (covered on Feb 14th)
– “Up-Hill”
– “Good Friday”
– “Goblin Market”
Rossetti’s “Good Friday” Handout
• Illustrates PRB tenets
• Like “Amazing Grace”
– Lost sinner saved by Christ
• Adds richness/density
– Rich, multiple meanings of “stone” “Peter,” and
“rock” (line 1 and 16), “sheep” (lines 1 and 14)
Goblin Market (1962)
Christina Rossetti
Laurence Housman’s wood
engraving, 1892
Goblins described
lines 1-15 and 50-59
Laura’s “eat me, drink me,
love me” lines 20-29
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)
•Aesthetic, brilliant, bi-polar
•Placed after Tennyson, Browning
and maybe Arnold
•Influenced by these, and Romantics
and PRB
•As Oxford student, influenced by
Newman, he converts to
Catholicism, goes on to teach
at Dublin Univ
•Suppressed poems published by
Bridges in 1918. Best known
Pied Beauty
God’s Grandeur
Windhover
Hopkins: Bridge to Modern Poets
Instress on Inscape
• Inscape: imagine a lone tree growing into the
world rather than being a part of the world
(landscape)
• Instress: like Wordsworth’s “spots of time”: to
GMH, a religious ahah.
– Imagist (John Ciardi): a poem is not what it means
but how it means
The Windhover
• Imagistic
• Relationship between the “I” and Christ as
seen in nature
I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion
Kestrel: “this morning, morning’s minion”
dives at 175 mph
https://youtu.be/31Xw75hAwIc
Next Week:
Nature and Changing Sense of Self
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Gerard Manley Hopkins
Meredith
Yeats
Kipling
The Victorian Challenge: Change
• Sense of Christ, God, and us in the universe
– Anglo-Catholic and Catholic Poets
• Science and industrialization
• Education and Religion
• Social justice
• England’s place in the world
• War