Faith, feeling, reality: Anne Bronte as an existentialist poet

Styler, Rebecca (2011) Faith, feeling, reality: Anne Bronte as an existentialist poet. In: Towards a new literary humanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 28-43. ISBN 9780230238152

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Abstract

Anne Bronte's struggles with her faith, as presented in her religious poetry of the 1840s, are here framed in terms of the long tradition of Christian existentialism. Her poetry is considered as an expression of an alienated sensibility, in which she diagnoses the given conditions of being as profoundly, painfully disappointing. Bronte reasons from this state of feeling, to achieve a new commitment to living out a Christian life while devoid of emotional conviction in its premises. Read in the light of nineteenth- and twentieth-century existentialist philosophers, Bronte's poetry transcends its historical particularities to articulate a religious perspective based on emotional needs.

Keywords:Religious poetry, Anne Bronte's poetry, Christian existentialism, Religion and feeling, Female romanticism, Humanism, Victorian religion, Digitised
Subjects:Q Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > Q320 English Literature
V Historical and Philosophical studies > V600 Theology and Religious studies
Divisions:College of Arts > School of English & Journalism > School of English & Journalism (English)
ID Code:5899
Deposited On:20 Jun 2012 09:24

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