English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Joys Of Earth: Evolutionary Kinship In Victorian Atheist And Agnostic Authors, Keri R. Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations--English

Darwin’s evolutionary theory provided, for some atheist and agnostic authors in Victorian England, a theory of kinship and community, of investment in the world, that had been missing before. Without a “creation” story that could match the Biblical version, those who stood outside the dominant Christian paradigm rarely had the words or concepts to construct their own visions of how humans fit into the existence of other species, into landscapes, and into a world that, if unfallen, seemed resistant to other explanations. Those who did construct alternate mythologies usually reared them on a Christian base.

Into the Victorian loss of …