Carlyle, Tennyson, and the Apocalyptic Tradition

Abstract

One of the major aims of this dissertation is to demonstrate that modern apocalypticism, however rationally justified it may appear to be, is the product of desires comparable to those which prompted our forebears to espouse apocalyptic beliefs. Apocalypticism springs from a persistent desire to see the present world order replaced by a perfected world order, a desire to render sacred the profanity of existence. The modern predilection to view the world in ironic terms has, however, rendered us incapable of attaining a sacramental vision, and we are thus victims of an ironic apocalypticisrn, which deals only in terms of destruction, not of regeneration, and we look to the future with gloomy foreboding rather than millennial hope. This, then, is the death-wish of modern culture, and the major part of the dissertation is concerned to show how the sacramental vision of Romanticism, which was itself in the mainstream of the Christian apocalyptic tradition, became transformed in the nineteenth century into the ironic apocalypticism of the present day. The first chapter opens with a discussion of the nature of apocalyptic belief and traces its development up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The central chapters examine in detail the careers of two writers--Carlyle and Tennyson--who started out from a fundamentally Romantic position, but who gradually moved towards a nihilistic vision of a world ruled by flux, which paved the way for the development of an ironic, non-sacramental vision. In the final chapter, the development of this ironic vision in the twentieth century is traced, and the dissertation concludes with an examination of current trends, and, in particular, of a nee-Romanticism, which seeks to reinstate a sacramental vision.