Question:
Reflecting on Victorian Poets: Doubts and Faith
Readers associate Victorianism with extremes of doubt and faith. Major Victorian poets certainly reflect these extremes, ideas which continue to circulate in our own century. Indeed, one may argue that the Victorians covered most of the bases with which we find ourselves preoccupied today. As the essay itself points out, "Belief, skepticism, neo-paganism, and atheism all emerge in the writings of the Victorian poets." The reader will find a discussion of several poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and Christina Rossetti which may be useful in a variety of college literature courses.