“Something Evermore about to Be.” The Transformation of Hope in the Romantic Era

Adam POTKAY

Department of English, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, P.O. Box 8795, Virginia, 23-187-8795, USA , United States

Dorota CHABRAJSKA

John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Hope is a double-edged concept in the Western tradition: on one hand, it is an emotion, and its opposite is fear. On the other hand, hope of a specific kind is one of the three theological virtues (along with faith and love), and its opposite is despair. As a theological virtue— the anticipation of sharing eternally in the glory of God—hope is always a good thing in Christian cultures. As a secular emotion, hope is more clearly related to assessments of an unknowable future. And depending on its object, it may also be morally problematic. This essay examines hope in British literature and philosophy from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, with particular attention to the writings of William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Stuart Mill. Hope comes in the Romantic era to underwrite a new, semi-secularized virtue: the hope, more or less independent of revealed religion, for more life, a better or perfected condition of the individual or of the species in time or eternity.

Keywords:

emotion, hope, John Stuart Mill, Romanticism, Percy B. Shelley, theological virtue, William Wordsworth