The Role Of Religion In British Literature Essay Example

📌Category: British Literature, Christianity, Literature, Religion
📌Words: 553
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 11 September 2021

Christianity has proven to hold great importance to English writers, and it can be seen reflected in the literature of the time. From the Anglo-Saxon era to the 20th century, Christian themes and messages are seen in literature, showcasing religious dreams, calling upon the Lord for help, and the mystery of the Second Coming. 

Religious epiphanies, especially in Christianity, often come in the form of dreams. The Anglo-Saxon era spans from the early fifth century to the mid-11th century, a time when Christianity was just being introduced to England. Dream of the Rood, written in the 10th century, paints a picture of Jesus’s crucifixion from the perspective of the crucifix, and finishes with a message of evangelization and hope for eternal life. The author utilizes a dream, also commonly used in the Bible when receiving messages from God, to proclaim his own change of heart and the greatness of God. For example, he says, “My heart’s close was / eager for the forth-way, suffering many / moments of longing. Now my hope for life is that I am allowed to seek that victorious tree…”. The dream that came to him changed the course of his life, and he uses the rest of the poem as a religious message, a proclamation of hope and redemption for all who believe. 

Dream of the Rood and “Holy Sonnet 14” both speak of the goodness of God, but the latter focuses on personal relationships with God. A major component of the Christian religion is calling upon God for help. John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14”, written in the 17th century, showcases the narrator’s plea for God to destroy his relationship with the enemy. The line, “…and bend / Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new” is the request that God, who has previously been gentle when trying to fix the narrator, take aggressive action instead. Calling upon God in times of weakness is seen in the Bible, with figures such as Jesus Christ, David, and Moses. The narrator in the poem is calling upon God in his weakness, saying, “I, like an usup’d town, to another due, / Labour to admit to you, but O, to no end.” He wants to be in God’s presence, but needs His help to conquer the enemy. The poem is a plea for help, rather than a song of praise. 

Donne and W.B. Yeats both write about the mysteries of God, but Yeats uses violent imagery to portray Biblical messages. Yeats, in his poem “The Second Coming,” paints a picture of his idea of Christ’s return. Christ, in his poem, is described as, “A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun…” The Gospels say that we will not know the day when Jesus will come again, nor what it will look like; Yeats creates an image that is more terrifying than glorious, contradicting the images that are present in the Bible. His idea that Christ will come again as a lion, without any emotion in his eyes, portrays Him as a figure of fear rather than one of hope and redemption. 

The Christian message can be seen throughout the history of British literature, from evangelization to imagining the Second Coming. The Anglo-Saxon era focuses on the goodness of God at the initial spread of Christianity, while Donne in the 17th century focused more on calling upon God in times of weakness. W.B. Yeats takes a different approach, painting a picture of the Second Coming as something to be feared, rather than highly anticipated.

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