Emily Brontë and Four Romantic and Post-Romantic Writers — Intellectual Trends in 19th-Century Europe

Abstract

This thesis looks at the intellectual and philosophical aspects of Emily Brontë's writings in the 19thcentury European literary and cultural context, through the comparisons of her works with those of four other Romantic and Victorian authors - the German Romantics Hölderlin and Novalis, and the English Victorians Tennyson and Arnold. The main texts the thesis deals with include Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847), her poems, and the Belgian essays (1842), Hölderlin's Hyperion (1797-1799), Novalis's Hymns to the Night (1800), Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) and Arnold's early poems. Apart from having a specific focus on Emily Brontë's relationship with the European Romantic movement, the thesis also covers topics such as the decline of Christianity in the early Victorian period, the rise of Darwinian discourse in the 19th century, and the transmutation of Romanticism in the Victorian context. The thesis has found that there are two ultimately incongruent paradigms of thought in Brontë's writings, one derived from the Romantic tradition of the previous generation, the other from the scientific discourse of the early Victorian period. Many of the conflicts and tensions in Brontë's writings are generated from this. Thus Brontë's situation offers an unusual example of an author who is perpetually caught up in the spiritual dilemma of the 19th century. At the same time, by comparing Brontë's thinking with those of four other authors who occupy prominent places in the literary and philosophical canon of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods, the thesis has illustrated part of a larger trend of European literary and intellectual movements.