‘We Fall Asleep and Never Wake Again’: Lucretius in James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night

The influence of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura ( On the Nature of Things) on Victorian poetry was considerable. Various poets from Matthew Arnold to Alfred Tennyson praised or criticised Lucretius’ ideas, especially during the debate on religion and the origin of humanity sparked off by Darwin’s theory of evolution. However, no poet of the Victorian era was impacted by Lucretius’ poetry more than James Thomson (‘B. V.’), whose The City of Dreadful Night (1874) has striking parallels with De Rerum Natura. Even though Thomson acknowledged such similarities, scholars have not analysed the intertextual relations between De Rerum Natura and The City of Dreadful Night. My article demonstrates that Thomson shared not only Lucretius’ ideas on religion, death, and the impossibility of the afterlife, but also his concept of a goddess as a symbol of creativity. My analysis also indicates that Thomson borrowed certain images from Lucretius and shared his belief in the power of poetry to convey controversial ideas.