If one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English studies in the later nineteenth century, one could do worse than reply: “the failure of religion.”
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
On the next page Eagleton quotes an English professor named George Gordon (not Byron) saying:
England is sick, and . . . English literature must save it. The Churches (as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our souls and heal the State.
Christian Leithart 