An end-of-century stoicism, and a growing pessimism among writers and intellectuals, may be traced to several sources, not least the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species which put the existence of God into radical question. ... Modernism is essentially post-Darwinian: it is a search to explain mankind's place in the modern world, where religion, social stability and ethics are all called into question. ... This is first noticeable in Hopkins and Hardy, and continues through Eliot and Auden to Larkin and more recently to Tony Harrison, Simon Armitage, and...

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