Romanticism, Christianity and (original) (raw)

The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011

Abstract

Christianity developed as Jesus had prophesied, like a vast tree from a mustard seed. What had once appeared to be a Jewish sect in a backwater of the Roman Empire became a global religion with vast cultural influence over the course of two millennia. Romanticism appeared some 18 centuries later. The organic motif was a favorite one for it, but no longer because it was ensured an automatic resonance with an agrarian society. On the contrary, as the English poet William Wordsworth noted in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in his day there was an “increasing accumulation of men in cities,” and with them and their uniformity of occupation, a subsequent “craving for extraordinary incident which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies” to which “life and manners” have sadly conformed. William Blake's poem “London” wrote of the “mind-forg'd manacles” he heard everywhere in that city's “chartered streets”; and in the Preface to his prophetic book Milton, now immortalized in the popular hymn “Jerusalem,” he wrote of “England's mountains green” beset with “dark Satanic mills.” Keywords: romanticism, Christianity and; romanticism, appearing 18 centuries later; blake's poem “london” of “mind-forg’d manacles”; twin appeals to nature, of the romantic movement

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