Agnosticism, Science Fiction, and Literary Trends

Posted on Mar 12, 2025 in English Language and Literature

Agnosticism

Agnosticism evolved during the nineteenth century, partly as a reaction to the negative response of religious authorities to its early, timid methodological implications. Initially, it referred to “knowledge in a neutral space, confined to the world of material causes.” This means that while performing scientific intellectual work, analysis is limited to scientific conditions, excluding theological implications. The context of methodology and science was later abandoned, and agnosticism became a more general position concerning metaphysical matters, somewhere between belief and disbelief: the idea that there is no way for humans to decide about these matters. Finally, a more aggressive skepticism became associated with the term.

Science Fiction Themes

Science Fiction was more dominated by fear than hope about “progress” and the solutions that science could offer. This dominance of negative perceptions can be perceived in almost all of the related, overlapping subgenres:

  • A) Mad Scientists and their Monsters: Early works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) explored the dangers of scientific overreaching.
  • B) Imaginary Voyages and Journeys: Three main possibilities can be found in the last two decades of the century:
    • Discovery of “lost worlds”
    • Extraterrestrial worlds
    • Alien visits
  • C) Utopias and Dystopias: Some early reactions to evolutionary principles and their limits were published in the 1870s, with peculiar combinations of the satirical and the romantic. These works were not very serious about political structures, nor certain about defining themselves as utopian or dystopian.
  • D) Apocalyptic Tales: These flourished after Lord Kelvin theorized in 1862 that all stars, including the sun, must gradually dissipate their energy until the universe reaches absolute darkness and absolute zero.

Georgic Versus Pastoral Approaches

  • 1) Georgic: Represents a local scene of (usually) agricultural production, in which human labor binds the natural order (land and seasons) and the social order (family, state). It shows how the community functions within a complex economy.
  • 2) Pastoral: Represents a leisured fantasy of country life on the part of property owners, as a condition of privileged retirement from political and economic struggle. It tends to confirm a sentimental opposition between the idealized country and the city.

The most ambitious provincial novels of the 1850-1875 period tend to adopt the Georgic mode, explaining the interrelations between local work and customs, natural settings, and the larger temporal and political frames of history and the nation. Modernization is a crucial element, explored through transformations and resistances. Pastoral approaches tend to avoid the issue of change, portraying places as free from it, where history is suspended.

Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

The Sketch is another popular format, linked to journalism and modern times. In this format, Charles Dickens (CD) and William Makepeace Thackeray (WMT) stand out as two young novelists. There are many differences between them:

  • Dickens adapted easily to this new, accelerated pace, describing it as happening in *streets*, and celebrating its dynamism.
  • Thackeray did not like this pace, was more reluctant, chose higher, “indoor” sections of society, and ridiculed modernity. (Satirical approach towards the present, implicit vindication of the past, and nostalgia for the stability of the aristocracy).

However, Dickens’s (Sketches by Boz) attitude is different:

  1. Lower social background.
  2. Better perception of journalism as an opportunity.
  3. No university training.
  4. No experience of the leisure life of a gentleman.
  5. Political imagination of the newly enfranchised.
  6. Urban commercial world (but also aware of the shabby-genteel).
  7. Dominant tone of approval; overall favorable, complacent portrait of society.

Romantic Poetry

Key poems and excerpts:

  • The World is Too Much With Us – Wordsworth
  • To Sleep – C. Smith (“Come, balmy Sleep! tired nature’s soft resort!”)
  • England in 1819 – Shelley (“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,”)
  • Song of the Men of England – Shelley

The Femme Fatale in the Gothic Novel

The perception of the femme fatale character is determined by the misogynistic vision, product of a patriarchal system, that only sees women as objects to be sexualized and whose only role is to corrupt men’s integrity through sexual attraction. This is evident in literary characters, such as vampire women.

Childhood in Romanticism

Children have greater imagination and a sense of freedom. We used to idealize everything and look at things as if we were seeing them for the first time. Adults tend to normalize daily routines and lose their excitement, not thinking too much about reality.

Melancholy

Is it normal to feel melancholy? Melancholy is neither depression nor sadness. A melancholic feeling involves not fitting into society, disillusionment, and the impossibility of reaching perfection; so, it is normal to feel that when you feel distant from the real world. In “and pine for what is not,” Shelley observed the pain for things that do not exist.

Femininity in Frankenstein

There are only three feminine characters in the novel: Caroline (the mother), Justine Moritz (adopted by the family), and Elisabeth Lavenza (adopted daughter, Victor’s wife). They are secondary characters, rarely seen outside the home. They represent sacrifice, as they all die due to Victor’s fault.

Doctor Frankenstein as a Satanic Hero

Doctor Frankenstein relates to the mad scientist prototype, used as a satanic hero. Doctor Frankenstein tries to compare himself to God, wanting to create “immortality.” His pretentiousness leads him to an insatiable search for a “higher knowledge” of life and death, believing he can control them as he wishes. The punishment he receives for the creation of his monster is remorse, terror, and isolation, since his own creation kills all his loved ones in revenge for creating and abandoning him to a miserable life (and, in a way, challenging God’s universal rules).

Characteristics of the Gothic Novel

The Gothic novel became popular at the end of the 18th century. It was characterized by:

  • The sublime, seen as a celebration of terror, a rejection of constraints and limits, and an exploration of forbidden areas.
  • Darkness, necessary for the mysterious, gloomy atmosphere.
  • Terror and horror have great importance.
  • The paradox and duality of human existence: good and evil at the same time.
  • Reading for fun, not learning.

“The Lamb” and “The Tyger” by William Blake

The author of these two poems is William Blake, who belongs to the first generation of the Romantic period. William Blake’s “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” present the possibility that God made paired opposites, including light and darkness, which uncover dual parts of God’s character. These poems, regularly read together, are generally disputable pieces of writing in the eighteenth century. In “The Tyger,” the audience is given a striking, almost dreadful picture of a tiger in a dark forest. Blake designs the poem to represent the darkness that God made. Blake’s poem “The Lamb” diverges from “The Tyger” and reminds the reader that God is capable of developing accommodating and conciliatory animals.