Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Robert M. Ryan

Oxford English Monographs

Demonstrates the importance of Wordsworth's poetry for religion and science
Draws new attention to Wordsworth's cultural importance
Finds connections between science and poetry not usually observed
Provides new analysis of the religious response to Darwin

Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Robert M. Ryan

Description

Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth is a study of the cultural connections between two of the nineteenth century's most influential figures, Charles Darwin and William Wordsworth. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his reading public's affective response to the natural world had already been profoundly influenced by William Wordsworth. Wordsworth presented nature as benign, harmonious, a source of moral inspiration and spiritual blessing, and a medium through which one might enter into communion with the Divine. Long after his death, he continued to be revered throughout the English-speaking world, not only as a great poet, but as a theologian with a broader following than any prelate and an appeal that transcended or ignored sectarian differences. For believers and skeptics alike, Wordsworth's poetry offered a readily accessible and intellectually respectable counterweight to Darwin's vision of a material universe evolving by fixed laws in which Divinity played no discernible role and where concepts like beauty and harmony were material conditions to be explained in scientific terms. Wordsworth's theology of nature became for many readers a more effective counterforce to Darwin's ideas than Biblical orthodoxy, but it also provided an enriching context for the reception of evolutionary theory, aiding theists in their effort to reach an accommodation with the new science. As the nineteenth century's two most prominent theoreticians of nature's life, Wordsworth and Darwin competed for attention among those seeking to understand humanity's relationship with the natural world, and their disciples engaged in a productive, mutually transformative dialogue in which the poet's cultural authority influenced the way Darwin was received, and Darwinian science adjusted interpretation and evaluation of the poetry. Charles Darwin and the Church of William Wordsworth explores the broad cultural relationship between Wordsworth, Darwin, and their disciples, contextualizing them within wider discussions about the relationship between religion and science in the nineteenth century.

Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Robert M. Ryan

Oxford English Monographs

Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Robert M. Ryan

Oxford English Monographs

Author Information

Robert M. Ryan earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York and served on the faculty of Rutgers University from 1971 to 2006. At Rutgers he received The Warren I. Susman Award and the Charles and Mary Lindback Award for Excellence in Teaching In 2000 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Keats-Shelley Association of America. For his book The Romantic Reformation he received the British Council Prize in the Humanities and the Christianity in Literature Award. He has served on the editorial board of The Wordsworth Circle and the advisory boards of the Keats-Shelley Association of America and the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.

Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Robert M. Ryan

Oxford English Monographs

Reviews and Awards

"Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth is a study of the reception of William Wordsworthâs poetry during the Victorian era, and its central thesis is that Wordsworth offered a spiritual understanding of the natural world that, for Victorian readers, offered an alternative, or a necessary supplement, to the scientific materialism of Darwin and his followers." -- Bruce Graver, European Romantic Review

""Most critics today would hesitate before comparing Wordsworth with Jesus Christ", Robert Ryan comments drily...But as Ryan shows in his well-argued book, a saviour was exactly what the poet became...This is an important resurrection of the complex cultural relationship between what Ryan calls the "dark star" of Wordsworth's influence and the scientist who himself rearranged the cosmos." -- Freya Berry, Times Literary Supplement

"Ryan's project is worked out with wonderful scholarly thoroughness. The evidential quotations across the whole of Anglo-American culture alone make this book valuable, but in addition his strong reconsideration of the conventions of Wordsworth criticism makes a valuable contribution to Wordsworth studies...the subject is a fundamentally important one to many of us citizens of a fully disenchanted world...For Darwinians like me, seeking to find a home in the world, Ryan's book is both satisfying as a work of deep and deeply felt scholarship, and as an engagement with the Wordsworthian project to fill the world with meaning and feeling. Ryan revalues Wordsworth's achievement, in part by facing squarely how his poetry affected generations from whom readers now feel dissociated. The project was important then, it it remains so now, and it is rather nice, in the company of so careful a scholar, to find in Wordsworth once again, a cultural hero." --George Levine, The Wordsworth Circle

"Ryan's book is both satisfying as a work of deep and deeply felt scholarship, and as an engagement with the Wordsworthian project to fill the world with meaning and feeling." --George Levine, The Wordsworth Circle

"I have spoken of Ryan's book as provocative. Let me add to this that it is detailed and very informative. The author draws on a deep knowledge of nineteenth-century literature, and pulls it all together in tight arguments. It shows a lifetime's dedication to scholarship, and Ryan should be rightfully proud of this...The Darwinian Revolution deserves the attention of top notch scholars. It has it." --Michael Ruse, author of MetaScience