Victorian Literature, Religion, and Secularization

Abstract

Recent debates about secularization are transforming Victorian literary studies. Earlier consensus about how to understand the relationship between religion, modernity, and secularization has given way to a variety of new models that no longer take for granted religion’s modern decline. Historical and literary studies now often emphasize the robust state of nineteenth‐century religion in particular, and this emphasis should alter our view of that period’s representative texts. Finally, revisionist ideas about secularization also permit us to see an internal critique of our prior secularization narrative from within the nineteenth century itself.

Ciencia y secularización en Las fuerzas extrañas, de Leopoldo Lugones

“…En otras ocasiones se recuperaba la participación de autores confesionales en las polémicas políticas y se comprobaba el carácter relativo de la distinción entre ortodoxias y heterodoxias (Sudlow, 2011). Igualmente, esta lectura ha servido para analizar la configuración plástica de algunos motivos literarios en función de los parámetros espirituales de cada época o, en un plano más específico, para estudiar la presencia o ausencia de Dios en el mundo recreado por la novela burguesa, o para cuestionar el empleo monolítico de la "muerte de Dios" en la interpretación de la literatura victoriana (Jager, 2006;LaPorte, 2013;Lee, 2006). Más en la línea de las propuestas postseculares de J. Habermas o postcoloniales de G. Spivak, otro grupo de estudios más recientes han enfatizado las productivas interacciones entre lo sacro y lo profano o han tratado de explicar las correlaciones entre la configuración de lo sacro y las identidades étnicas o nacionales (Branch, 2020;Srivastava, 2008).…”

Is Victorian Poetry Modern?

“…The profession of English, in its infancy, reflected Arnold's belief that the study of literature and the cultivation of culture must serve as the necessary replacement for religion, which was no longer tenable as a dogmatic system but nonetheless played a key role in ensuring social stability. The Victorian era's concern with secularization becomes literary studies own origin story, which explains why “[i]n scholarship that leans upon the usual narrative of secularization, the doubt‐filled oeuvre of a (most often) male poet like Arnold or A.H. Clough emerges as a key cultural bellwether, while the religious one of a (very often) female one like Barrett Browning seems like a vestigial remainder” (“Victorian Literature, Religion, and Secularization” 280). LaPorte argues that we should reject a triumphalist narrative of secularization, in which faith is slowly but surely undone by doubt, and embrace a more nuanced account, such as Charles Taylor's claim that the nineteenth century is “secular” not because of a large‐scale loss of belief (in fact religious faith remained quite strong) but rather due to a change in the fundamental conditions of belief.…”

The Dynamics of Poetics and Forgiveness in Adelaide Procter's ‘Homeless’

“…Emma Mason's introduction to this special issue establishes the impossibility of fully considering “forgiveness” as either a “secular” or a “religious” phenomenon and illustrates how that challenge might carry into the reading of poetry. Turning to historical, rather than formal, concerns, Charles LaPorte's recent contribution to Literature Compass details the value of collapsing the “secular/religious” binary in Victorian scholarship. LaPorte further points out how the secularization narrative has pressed religious poets, particularly female religious poets, to the margins even while their work might provide exactly the evidence that nuances that narrative.…”