The Lyrical Strain in Victorian Poetry (original) (raw)

The Major Victorian Poets: Reconsiderations (Routledge Revivals)

2011

The Major Victorian Poets: Reconsiderations (Routledge Revivals) Isobel Armstrong First published in 1969, this edition collection brings together a series of essays offering a re-evaluation of Victorian poetry in the light of early 20th Century criticism. The essays in this collection concentrate upon the poets whose reputations suffered from the great redirection of energy in English criticism initiated in this century by Eliot, Richards and Leavis. What theses poets wrote about, the values they expressed, the form of the poems, the language they used, all these were examined and found wanting in some radical way. One of the results of this criticism was the renewal of interest in metaphysical and eighteenth-century poetry and corresponding ebb of enthusiasm for Romantic poetry and for Victorian poetry in particular. Most of the essays in this book take as their starting point questions raised by the debate on Victorian poetry, both earlier in this century and in the more recent past. There are essays on the poetry of Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, on that of Clough, who until recently has been neglected, and Hopkins, because of, rather than in spite of, the fact that he is usually considered to be a modern poet. The volume is especially valuable in that it will give a clearer understanding of the nature of Victorian poetry, concentrating as it does on those areas of a poet's work where critical discussion seems most necessary.

A C O M P A N I O N T O VICTORIAN POETRY

This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and postcanonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field.

Victorian poetry as a literary tradition

A literary tradition is generally looked upon as a periodic or national group of literary works that share specific commonalities such as of form, themes, subject matter, ethos or worldview. However, this can become too unfair a generalization since a literary tradition is also the collective totality of individuality of each poet of that tradition. In this essay, I will be focusing on the Victorian poetic tradition in order to discuss how a literary tradition is in fact a combination of many cultural traditions and voices.

Victorian Poetry and the Classics

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, 2013

This article examines the relation between classical texts and Victorian poetry. While some works draw upon ancient Greek literature as a model for contemporary life, poems such as Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ undermine the heroic code of ancient epic by evoking a sense of melancholy and self-indulgence.

Compass Points for Victorian Poetry Studies: 2002-2004 and Beyond

Literature Compass, 2004

Drawing upon four book-length studies published in 2002 and two forthcoming special issues devoted to the future of Victorian poetry scholarship, the present article charts three prospective directions for study. Neoformalism-renewed interest in form-addresses the cultural ideologies that are exposed, challenged, and performed by genre, meter, and other formal elements. Investigations of poetry in relation to (or as) a technology also continue to quicken. Reconfiguring Victorian poetry's body of work through alternate organizing principles, for example, transatlantic exchanges, is also ongoing, as are fresh approaches to human bodies (whether in sexual or environmental terms) that these poems represent.

Lyric Poetry

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing, 2021

A definition of “lyric poetry” that is both capacious and historically informed requires placing the term within the context of a longer and broader critical and poetic tradition, especially since current critical understanding of lyric poetry is very expansive. In critical discourse, “lyric poetry” has evolved from mode (a situation of enunciating where the poet speaks in his own name, as understood by Plato) to genre (as one of three general categories of poetic literature, the other two being narrative or epic, and dramatic) and also includes form. Since lyric poetry, in the form of odes, elegies, sonnets, etc., did not “imitate” “men in action,” a mode privileged by the Greeks, being expressive of authors’ ideas or feelings instead, to promote its poetic status and to integrate lyric poetry into classical poetics, theorists asserted that the “imitation” was an “imitation of feeling.” Simply put, in “epic and dramatic poetry, one imitates actions and customs; in the lyric, one sings of imitated feelings or passions,” expressing the “cries of the heart” (Genette (1979); 2014: 22–24, quoting Batteaux). Victorian women poets worked within the generic conventions and expectations inherited from their Renaissance and Romantic predecessors, though the “cries of the heart” and “artless,” “spontaneous” “melodies” denied poets like Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) claims to conscious artistry (Lootens 1996: 182). The rediscovery of nineteenth-century women poets has thus included serious critical attention demonstrating how they experimented with or developed new forms and genres and how they have attended to matters concerning voice.

The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry

2012

The best way to learn about Romantic poetry is to plunge in and read a few Romantic poems. This book guides the new reader through this experience, focusing on canonical authors-Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Blake, and Shelley-and including less familiar figures as well. Each chapter explains the history and development of a genre or sets out an important context for the poetry, with a wealth of practical examples. Michael Ferber emphasizes connections between poets as they responded to each other and to the great literary, social, and historical changes around them. A unique appendix resolves most difficulties new readers of works from this period might face: unfamiliar words, unusual word order, the subjunctive mood, and meter. This enjoyable and stimulating book is an ideal introduction to some of the most powerful and pleasing poems in the English language, written in one of the greatest periods in English poetry.