Victorian Poetry

Romantic poetry Victorian poetry Modernism: influence of romantic poetry: mostly Keats the most important difference: a growing sense of distance, less confidence in the power of poetic imagination [cf. Browning suggesting that after the subjective prophets there must come another race of poets: prodigal of objects for mens outer and not inner sight] general feature: Victorian poetry is usually pictorial: creates visual images to represent emotions, situations ( Imagism of the early 20th century) Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) - the celebrated poet of the age: a superb technician, in his early poetry showing the influence of Keats vivid descriptions, lavish ornamentation - early volumes: 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1832 Poems, 1842 Poems - both The Lady of Shalott and The Lotos-Eaters were first published in the 1832 volume, then revised for the 1842 volume both show Tennysons passion of the past: the first relies on the medieval, the second on the classical tradition - The Lady of Shalott: a similar story to that of Elaine, the White Maid of Astolat (Arthurian legends), though Tennysons source was an Italian novella ways of interpretation: the isolation of the artist (the lady singing, weaving, the world of poetic/creative imagination seems brighter than reality); the isolation of the Victorian woman - The Lotos-Eaters: based on an episode from Homers Odyssey: the sailors returning home after the fall of Troy land on a strange island, they taste the fruits of the lotos plant growing there, feeling a languorous content they bocome reluctant to continue their journey home the desire to withdraw from the world of work and competitive struggle, weariness, a desire for rest, for death [We have had enough of action, and of motion..., Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil ...] 1850 In Memoriam elegy, on the death of Arthur Hallam meditates upon questions of faith and doubt (different interpretations: the Victorian view like that of Queen Victoria - : Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort; the modernists view: T.S. Eliot: the poem is remarkable not because of its faith but because of its doubt) 1850 Poet Laureate: Tennysons awareness of his duties as the leading poet of his country accepting the role as a guide of the public, his poetry becoming more didactic The Idylls of the King rewriting the legend of King Arthur to the Victorian readers dedicating it to the Queen, likening Prince Albert to the great King of the Round Table Robert Browning (1812-89) - early enthusiasm: for Byron and Shelley - Sordello (1840): the story of a 13th-century troubadour [traveller poet and singer] made him notorious of his obscurity - most known of his dramatic monologues (a poem consisting of the speech by a single character historical or imaginary - who reveals his thoughts, character and situation; in Brownings poems: mostly ironic character-sketches) - My Last Duchess (published in Dramatic Lyrics 1842): one of his early dramatic monologues set in the 16th-century Ferrara, the reader listens to the duke as he speaks of his dead wife (although it is part of an imaginary conversartion, the reader gets only the words of the duke) and it is left to the

reader to piece together the situation, the character of the dutchess and the character of the duke; the power of the poem lies in the tension between the story and judgement the duke thinks he is giving and the one that is finally gained by the reader (that he arranged the murder of his wife) Brownings interest in the psychology of the speaker - aims at psychological insight (cf. also: Porphyrias Lover [note the speakers abnormal state of mind], and Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto [in Men and Women 1855]): My stress lay on incidents in the development of the human soul, little else is worth study. - they provide distance - Browning resented any suggestion that he revealed his own mind in his characters objectivity (cf.: the comment of George Eliot: we would rather have Fra Lippo Lippi than any essay on Realim in Art) Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1852): the quest of a knight (mentioned in Shakespeares King Lear), child(e): means a youth, usually a candidate for knighthood; the Dark Tower: his mysterious, ultimate goal: after a journey through a frightening wasteland Roland reaches the tower, blows his horn, but what happens after is left unsaid an enigmatic, nightmarish poem: Is it a Victorian story of courage and gain or the presentation of a modern wasteland and hopelessness? - in style: more colloquial and discordant than Victorian poets in general Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) - in her time more popular than her husband (some suggested that she should follow Wordworth at his death in 1850 as Poet Laureate) - appreciated by the Victorians mostly for her poems of social awareness: The Cry of the Children written in response to the report on the inhuman conditions of children employed in mines and factories (R.H. Horne, 1842) [How long, [the children] say, how long, O cruel nation, / Will you stand, to move the world, on a childs heart?], many of the details are taken from Hornes writing; The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point on the helpless situation of black slaves - likewise comtemporary social concerns: Aurora Leigh (1856) - a verse novel on the growth of a female poets mind (as such seen in parallel with Wordsworths Prelude) the heroine following her poetic vocation rather than becoming a typical Victorian wife Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850): a collection of sonnets (Petrarchan, but strongly influenced by Shakespeares sonnets) published under the disguise of translations from the Portuguese, very personal, commemorating her love relationship with Robert Browning Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1827-82) - poet-painter, an early admirer of William Blake - Italian background, the influence of Italian literature: Dante and the dolce stil nuovo sonettiers [second half of the 13th century], also a number of translations from Italian to English - a life-long fascination with Dante and his love for Beatrice, with the spiritual connection between earthly and unearthly, his search to seize the fleeting, emotionally tense moments of life - a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848): a group of artists intending to reform British art advocating the unity of the sister arts (cf.: his double-works), editing the short-lived magazine: The Germ - his early poem The Blessed Damozel first published there: the influence of Edgar Allen Poe and Dante, gradual movement towards the unification of the blessed damozel and her lover on earth, the denial of the traditional view of heaven, sensuality

The House of Life his sonnet-sequence severely attacked by some of the contemporaries for its (alleged?) sensuality - his view of art and life his concern rather for beauty than morals anticipates the aesthetic movement Christina Rossetti (1830-94) - a great variety in her poetry: much of it is devotional, but also nursery songs, dramatic monologues, narrative fables, ballads, pure lyrics, childrens poetry - her affinity with the Pre-Raphaelites can be seen in her minute, tangible descriptions, her deceptively simple style - most known work: Goblin Market multilayered meaning: a simple tale of two sisters tempted by goblin men to eat their forbidden fruits, or a religious account of sin and redemption, or an erotic display of repressed sexuality - her sonnet In an Artists Studio gives an account of her brothers obsession with the beauty of Elizabeth Siddal (herself writing poems and painting water-colours), often interpreted on feminist terms: the model is reduced to what she (her beauty) means to the painter Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) - foreign influence is gaining ground in late Victorian poetry: Swinburne was an enthusiast of Baudelaire: in his review on Fleurs du Mal: a mass of readers seem actually think that a poem is the better for containing a moral lesson, but, according to Swinburne, it is not so a denial of the didactic aim of High-Victorian art and literature - he intended to shock the public: attacking the traditional values like love, family, moral codes - in his essay on Blake: the declaration of art for arts sake: Handmaid of religion, exponent of duty, servant of fact, pioneer of morality [art] cannot in any way become [Arts] business is not to do good on other grounds, but do good on her own: all is well with her while she sticks fast to that. Gerald Manley Hopkins (1848-89) - was a Jesuite (Roman Catholic) priest: most of his works: on his spiritual relations with God - the influence of Metaphysical poetry, technical experimentation: invents new words, combines words in surprising ways, sprung rhythm [based on the number of stresses rather than on the number of syllables] seen as a pioneering figure of modern literture - a Victorian poet whose works became known only in 1918