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Introducing “Sonnets From the Portuguese” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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“God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.” – Sonnet XXVI

Image result for sonnets from the portugueseIt should come as no suprise that poets, who tend to feel passionately and think intensely, should fall passionately and intensely in love. “First time he kissed me, he but only kissed / The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,” swooned Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her love poems to her husband, Robert Browning, in Sonnets From the Portuguese (1850), and went on to describe how that kiss affected her hand so that her hand almost takes on a life of its own, as does the imprint of the kiss itself. Barrett’s gaze of love imbues inanimate objects with life, as if love enables one to see the very atoms and molecules of the universe dancing.

The adoration E. B. Browning declares for her husband in Sonnets is so passionate that it might come across to modern Christian readers (who are typically unfamiliar with not only classic poetry in general but sonnets in particular – the classic love poem which sets the beloved as an object of worship and admiration) as idol worship, but I would humbly suggest such a reaction might indicate how little we adore God himself, as our veneration for him ought to be even greater (and our love for our spouses greater as well).  But E. B. Browning writes in Sonnets that “God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame,” revealing how the greatest gift of her life, her husband, who is a more wonderful gift than she could ever have dreamed of, proves God’s superior goodness and worthiness.  “Atheists are…dull, who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight,” she scoffs in Sonnet XX; gifts must come from a giver, and a good gift comes from an even greater giver. Image result for the barretts of wimpole street

Browning’s life story was dramatic. Robert Browning became enraptured with her poetry, and arranged to meet the poet on her sickbed, whereupon he fell deeply in love with her. However, to elude Elizabeth’s tyrannical father, who refused to consent to any of his children marrying, Elizabeth and Robert married secretly and fled to Italy, where she recovered her health and they lived happily. The Browning’s romance was dramatized in a 1930’s film titled The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which was nominated for two Oscars.

The title for E. B. Brownings Sonnets From the Portuguese arises from Robert Browning affectionately calling her “my little Portuguese,” because of her dark hair and complexion. One of the most famous poems from the collection, “Sonnet XLIII: How Do I Love Thee?”, follows.

 

How Do I Love Thee? 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Read more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s novel Aurora Leigh on CVL:

Introducing “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Faith vs. Works in “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Introducing “Hints on Child Training” by H. Clay Trumbull

22 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing..., Uncategorized

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American literature, nonfiction, parenting

Image result for hints on child training

Hints on Child Training (1890) presents a gentle, loving and holistic approach to rearing children. Henry Clay Trumbull, a minister of an American Congregationalist church, head of the Sunday School Movement and grandfather, believed that children are whole persons and, accordingly, parents must train their children’s bodies, emotions and minds. “Teaching” involves imparting knowledge; “training,” on the other hand, concerns “the shaping, the developing, and the controlling of [a child’s] personal faculties and powers.”

Drawing on his own experience as a father, grandparent and teacher, Trumbull wrote in Child Training that a parent’s best tools for disciplining their child into obedience are caring, sympathy, gentleness, attention and respect. Parents should not try to force their children to comply, but rather should encourage the desire in their children to obey.  Always humbly turning to scripture as a guide, Trumbull explains that God, our preeminent parenting model, desires us to obey happily, not out of fear or force. God does not break his children’s will, but rather leaves them to the unhappy consequences of their own choices as punishment.

Hints on Child Training also counsels parents to establish good habits in every aspect of their child’s life, from their appetite and manners to their choices  in reading, companions and more. Most importantly, Trumbull admonishes parents to present their children with an authentic faith, not a wish-genie god or some other such superficial belief that crumbles when trials come.  This “hint,” among other child-training advice, makes Trumbull’s book as relevant and helpful today as it was over one hundred years ago.

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Introducing “Stepping Heavenward” by Elizabeth E. Prentiss

13 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing..., Uncategorized

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American, Elizabeth E. Prentiss, hymn writer, sanctification, Stepping Heavenward

It is delightful to discover a Victorian hymn writer who was also a novelist! Elizabeth E. Prentiss, who penned the well-known hymn “More Love to Thee,” published several works of fiction, including Stepping Heavenward: One Woman’s Journey to Godliness (1869). In this coming of age story, the protagonist Katharine journals her pilgrimage through the summits and valleys of sanctification, the process by which God uses blessings and trials to shape and refine us into people after his own heart. Although Prentiss was American, her works were widely read throughout the British Commonwealth and translated into other languages; Prentiss was even included in a German anthology entitled A Collection of British Authors.

From beginning to end Stepping Heavenward is infused with the truths of the Christian faith, but three overarching themes govern them all, and all derive from scripture. Firstly, every trial is sent from God to test and refine us, and the choice we make regarding each one – to accept with humility or reject in anger – will either draw us closer to or push us away from God. Secondly, the key to Christian joy is contentment in all circumstances (especially in unfavourable circumstances).  And lastly, everything should be done for the glory of God, by doing it in the spirit of Christ – and not just when praying or visiting the poor. Even when working, shopping or pursuing a hobby we should not act as though a secular/sacred divide separates our lives. All is God’s, and we can choose to bring glory to him every moment.

For another example of Christian literature that aims to inspire readers to act virtuously see Agnes Grey (introduction and analysis).

 

 

 

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Book Giveaway Winner Announced

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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Congratulations to Jeff on winning a copy of of Queen Victoria by Walter L. Arnstein. Enjoy!

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Faith vs. Works in “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Faith vs. Works, Salvation through faith

“But we, distracted in the roar of life,
Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,
And bruit [spread rumour] against Him that His thought is void,
His meaning hopeless – cry, that everywhere
The government is slipping from his hand,
Unless some other Christ, (say Romney Leigh)
Come up and toil and moil and change the world,
Because the First has proved inadequate,
However we talk bigly [highly] of His work
And piously of His person. We blaspheme
At last, to finish our doxology,
Despairing on the earth for which He died.” – Aurora Leigh

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.          – Hebrews 11:6

Sometimes we are deceived into thinking the questions of our age are unique to ours alone, and that they mark a progression of human thought over the centuries. However, issues which concern us today, such as social justice and social welfare, preoccupied the Victorians just as much (as evidenced by books such as Aurora Leigh) as they sought to ameliorate the detestable working and living conditions of the lower classes. In Christian spheres, both today and in the 1800s, the issue of social justice becomes a theological one, and not a peripheral debate, either; our view on good works reflects our understanding of the gospel and the role of Jesus Christ in our salvation. How much are we responsible for curing social ills? Are we doubting the sovereignty of God by fretting over our works? Could it be blasphemy to do so, as Barrett Browning writes?

The question especially close to Barrett Browning’s heart in Aurora Leigh is the role of the artist – the contemplator of God, his creation and the people he populated it with. How productive is art, and by extension, faith, in a hungry and starving world? These questions are older than our age or the Victorians’; they go back to the Bible and its discussion of faith vs. works. Every age since the Bible has wrestled with (or settled) this issue differently, some weighing down heavily on one side or the other. For many Victorians confronted with the suffering brought about by the industrial revolution, particularly the Christian socialists and the Unitarians (such as Elizabeth Gaskell), their theology, which perceived Jesus’ primary work on the cross as exemplary, rather than atoning, provided the impetus for their emphasis on charity and education for the poor, i.e. good works.

That said, Gaskell’s social problem novel Mary Barton includes a noticeable lack of practical suggestions for fixing society and instead relies on scriptural exegesis, namely 1 Corinthians 12, which promotes a united body guided by the spirit of Christ, for her solution to the class divide. Her exegesis belies her value of faith; she can’t help but bring God into a discussion of evil and suffering, and prioritize the reconciliation of society with its heavenly Father and brothers and sisters in Christ before social reform. And can a novel, a work of art (an oxymoron?), really constitute a “good work” anyway? Which brings us back to Aurora Leigh, which tries to marry the two sides of the salvation coin – faith and works.

I am reminded of Mark 14, where the disciples harshly criticize a woman for wasting beautiful-smelling perfume that “could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor” by pouring it over Jesus’ feet. Rebuking them, Jesus calls her effort “beautiful.” Also, the many verses commanding us to daily praise the Lord and to continually contemplate his law come to mind. Faith is our upward expression, toward heaven, through our praises, thanksgiving, prayers, repentance and contemplation, and works are our outward expression, toward our fellow human beings, and they include charity, kindness, feeding the poor, caring for orphans, forgiveness, intercessory prayer and so on; even these, we do to please God. We need both the poet (Aurora Leigh) and the philanthropist (Romney Leigh), the former to inspire our faith and the latter to move us to action. We know the Bible clearly delineates that faith and works cannot be separated, because the the latter is evidence of the former; however, faith always comes first, which I believe is the central message of Aurora Leigh. We are justified by faith first, when Christ first grips our soul, and then works follow, as we seek to follow in his footsteps. I leave you with the following arresting illustration from Aurora Leigh:

“‘Tis impossible
To get at men excepting through their souls,
However open their carnivorous jaws;
And poets get directlier at the soul,
Than any of you oeconomists:–for which,
You must not overlook the poet’s work
When scheming for the world’s necessities.
The soul’s the way. Not even Christ himself
Can save man else than as He hold man’s soul;
And therefore did He come into our flesh,
As some wise hunter creeping on his knees
With a torch, into the blackness of some cave,
To face and quell the beast there,–take the soul,
And so possess the whole man, body and soul.” – Aurora Leigh

______________________________

Some more quotes from Aurora Leigh worth pondering:

“Art is much, but love is more.
O Art, my Art, thou’rt much, but Love is more!
Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God”

 

“Verily I was wrong;
And verily, many thinkers of this age,
Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,–
The great below clenched by the great above;
Shade here authenticating substance there;
The body proving spirit, as the effect
The cause: we, meantime, being too grossly apt
To hold the natural, as dogs a bone,
(Though reason and nature beat us in the face),
So obstinately, that we’ll break our teeth
Or ever we let go. For everywhere
We’re too materialistic,–eating clay,
(Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s corn
And Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,
Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,
And grow the grimy colour of the ground
On which we are feeding. Ay, materialist
The age’s name is.”

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes”

 “The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,
Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.”

“This race is never grateful: from the first,
One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,
Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,
In bitter vinegar.’
              ‘If gratefuller,’
He murmured,–’by so much less pitiable!
God’s self would never have come down to die,
Could man have thanked him for it.'”

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Introducing “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church” by James K. A. Smith

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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Derrida and Christianity, James. K. A. Smith, Postmodernism and Christianity

“My goal is to demythologize postmodernism by showing that what we commonly think so-called postmodernists are saying is usually not the case. Second, and perhaps more provocatively, I will demonstrate that, in fact, all these claims have a deep affinity with central Christian claims.”  –“Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?”

I first stumbled across this little volume shortly after completing my master’s degree several years ago, and I was thrilled to find it. “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church” by James K. A. Smith is the first installment in a series entitled “The Church and Postmodern Culture” that seeks to offer Christian perspectives on postmodernism in a practical and very readable way.

Evangelical Christian professors engaging with academic big guns like Derrida and Foucault? And engaging them on a fair and critical level, pointing out where they got it right – not just offering sweeping condemnation? Where have you been all these years?

In this book, Smith argues that Christians misunderstand the main claims of postmodernism (below) because they don’t understand the context of these claims:

“There is nothing outside the text.” -Derrida

“Postmodernity is ‘incredulity toward metanarratives.'” -Lyotard

“Power is knowledge.” -Foucault

Smith spends the remainder of the book explaining how, when understood in context, all of these postmodernist slogans actually hold true in the Christian worldview. Smith’s book reads clearly and accessibly, but that does not hinder its profundity. If you like books that offer a little philosophy trip, you’ll want to pick up this book. Prepare to change your mind about postmodernism as you always thought you knew it.

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Reblogged: “Why Literature Matters: Some Presuppositional Considerations”

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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Some insightful observations about literature and narration from a favourite blog of mine.

Why Literature Matters: Some Presuppositional Considerations (Pt.2).

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Introducing “Orthodoxy” by G.K. Chesterton

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Uncategorized

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chesterton and literary criticism, chesterton and marxism, chesterton authority and tradition, chesterton modernism postmodernism poststructuralism

“I had always felt life first as a story; and if there is a story there is a story-teller.” – Orthodoxy

 I have a long list of contemporary Christian criticism books to review, but I happened to recently read G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy for the first time and felt compelled to include it in my blog, even though Chesterton challenges the modernists of his time (Orthodoxy was published in 1908), and I am more concerned with the postmodernists. What strikes me as fascinating, though, is the similarity between the concerns of both movements. The postmodernists and poststructuralists may come across as having something new to say, but they are still dealing with the same essential question (or moving on from what they believe is a now-settled question): is there an author of life?

 Chesterton’s Orthodoxy answers this question with an unequivocal, resounding “Yes.”  For Chesterton, life makes no sense without an ultimate author or creator because an author is the only source of meaning. Essentially, an author is a “meaning-maker” (my own term). It is not hard to see, then, how Christian and anti-poststructuralist such an approach is. The benefit of hindsight enables us to see that from Karl Marx’s anarchy to Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” to Michel Foucault’s “What Is An Author?” secular philosophers over the last century and a half have attacked, killed and erased the notion of God from societal thought. Chesterton criticizes Marxism’s resistance against authority and its endeavour to encourage people to rise up against it. Modernism and postmodernism witness the author die, and poststructuralism throws doubt on the entire concept of author (Foucault). God is no longer simply dead; he never existed in the first place. Without a meaning-maker, we are “free” to construct our own meanings, beliefs and identities. Unfortunately, as Christians know, such “freedom” is death (death masquerading as freedom). As my pastor recently illustrated in a sermon: when you jump off of a building, it feels pretty darn freeing for a while – until you hit the ground. Likewise, I’m sure the forbidden fruit tasted delicious until it was fully consumed, and shame set in.

 Writing from the time of Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, Chesterton only saw the beginning of the road to anti-authority; as a literary major studying poststructuralism, you can see where it ended up. Orthodoxy covers so much more than I can discuss here, and I cannot praise enough the book’s intellect, depth and beauty. This is one to sit down with, linger over and read again and again. If you like C.S. Lewis, you’ll want to read Chesterton (and you’ll see the roots of some of Lewis’ thinking). For the literary major seeking a good discussion of authority and tradition from a Christian standpoint, look no further.

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Recent Posts

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  • Introducing: “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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