The use and purpose of myth in Victorian Age was used so the poets and writers could tell their ideas, solutions, or opinion on or about the changes happening during the Industrial and Victorian age. Some of the authors also used myth so they would not make their readers feel stupid or being talked down to. I have chosen Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin as three poets who use myth to help illustrate their feelings and beliefs about the changes happening. Their use of myth helped these poets illustrate the changes England and the world were going through because of the industrial age, science, religious upheaval, and social reform. Each of these authors used mythical times or creatures to give their opinion of what the society needed to do during this time. Below is a discussion of what I fell how each of these author's use myth and their purpose of using it.
Carlyle uses myth (past) to help bring the past into the present. Also possibly to help bring the audience in the present into a future (which can be even better) that helps bring back the past (i.e., recuperates it). To Carlyle, using myth (or the past) helps him imagine what the nation or society can gain and recuperating what was lost. But also to possibly introduce them to his view on authoritarianism, which Carlyle thought how the society should be. By using myth in his writings, he is able to use some of the present symbols and signs in a mythical form to actually show the true conditions of what is happening to the English society. For Carlyle, this was a way for him to emphasize his .
symbolic interpretation rather than providing them with a more broad systematic inquiry. In his poem "Past and Present," Carlyle elaborates it mythically by comparing England to Midas, a place that loses it wealth or bounty. He creates a vision of what England is going through but he shows you that by using the myth (past) you can see a good future.
