Article: Patmore, Pascal, and Astronomy.(Blaise Pacal's influence on the works of Coventry Patmore)(Critical Essay)

IN THE VICTORIES OF LOVE, WRITTEN THREE YEARS BEFORE PATMORE'S 1864 conversion to Catholicism in Rome, extended astronomical metaphors begin to appear with such frequency in his poetry that one might consider the later Patmore a rival of Tennyson as the Victorian poet who demonstrates the greatest knowledge of contemporary astronomy. (1) What could have prompted such an emphasis? I contend that Patmore shortly before and after his conversion to Catholicism grapples with the legacy of the great Jansenist Catholic writer, Blaise Pascal, whose Pensees we know Patmore read2 and which he conspicuously imitated in his late collection of apothegms, "The Aurea Dicta," from The ...

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