Victorian Doubt In God

Victorian Doubt In God ...racked my brain for a topic that would interest me as well as something I could learn from. When I came across Alfred Lord Tennyson it sparked my interest and as I read on I decided that I would write about him. My next decision was to pick one of his poems to research. I finally chose In Memoriam I read the background on it and it interested me. In Memoriam is very long so I%26#8217;m only going to discuss some it. But I want to begin by discussing the Victorian Doubt in God. In %26#8220; Characteristics%26#8221;, Carlyle discusses the same doubt in God that Tennyson feels in In Memoriam, a doubt that characteristically reflects religion in England under the reign of Queen Victoria. Carlyle doubts man%26#8217;s beliefs because he understands man%26#8217;s insignificance in the realm of things and thus wonders how any of man%26#8217;s answers to any questions of the world could be right. He doubts many things especially God. To Carlyle, God did not represent an answer to the problems of the world: We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All; yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof; partaking of its infinite tendencies: borne this way and that by its deep swelling tides, and grand ocean currents; of which what faintest chance is there that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, therefore, lovers forever in the background: in action alone can we have certainty. Nay properly doubt is the indispensable inexhaustible material whereon action works, which action has to fashion into certainty and reality; only on a canvas of darkness, such is man%26#8217;s way of being, could the many colored picture of our life paint itself and shine. (Norton 957-958) What made Tennyson so Victorian was his ready acceptance of the mores of...