Once upon a time... nostalgia for the imagined medieval harmony of the arts, religion and society was a powerful impetus for the aesthetic revival in these areas in Victorian England.
There is a tendency to think of Britain in the Victorian era as a country in which the 'forces of reform' gradually persuaded the 'forces of reaction' to concede 'moderate progress' in the areas that mattered most: democracy, education, social conditions and the overall standard of living. There is, of course, some element of truth behind the popular images, but Victorian society was as complex as those that preceded and succeeded it. And one very important underlying trend within Victorian society was the appeal to a past golden age, in this case Christian Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
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