ABSTRACT
Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Arnold saw English culture as seriously threatened by a process of secularization that had its origins in the growing persuasiveness of scientific thinking and by a ‘Philistinism’ that was loosened upon the world by the social rise of a self-important, money-oriented, and utterly conventional middle class. With the spiritual comforts of religion increasingly questionable now that the sciences – in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution – had thoroughly undermined the authority of Bible and Church, Arnold foresaw a crucial, semi-religious role for poetry especially:
More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
