Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater

This book argues that Walter Pater and Algernon Swinburne draw upon the legacy of Romantic Hellenism in order to explore the possibilities of a secular model of enchantment and to complicate the common Victorian assumption that secularisation was a story about rationality, disillusionment, and loss. 1. Parleying with Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold: Swinburne and the Drama of Blasphemy 2. Though Hearts Reach Back and Memories Ache': Melancholy, Religious Doubt, and Swinburne's Strenuous Joy 3. A Secular, a Rebellious Spirit Often Betrays Itself': Pater's Early Aestheticism 4. Inheriting Its Strange Web of Belief and Unbelief': George Eliot's Romola, Pater's Marius the Epicurean, and the Aura of Agnosticism 5. Conclusion