Author: Isobel Armstrong
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567136744
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
In the years covered by this volume high Victorian poetry reached it's prolific peak and stimulated a corresponding abundance of critical comment. As poets turned to new themes and new modes of presenting them, critics sought to redifine the function of poetry in their time and nowhere with greater immediacy and sense of the cultural issues at stake than in the periodicals. Two occasions when discussion was particularly lively - in relation to Tennyson's early poems and Arnold's 1853 Preface - are here used by Dr. Armstrong as focal points and with them in mind she has selected and annotated 13 substantial reviews, principally devoted to the poetry of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold and Clough. Dr. Armstrong's own long Introduction serves equally as an indispensable preliminary guide to the fundamentals of Victorian criticism and as an authoritative summing-up of the debate on poetics conducted at large in the body of the book by the Victorians themselves. Detailed bibliographies for further reading are provided at the end of each main section.
Author: Isobel Armstrong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780567345448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198187271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
'This book is one of the most impressive critical analyses of nineteenth-century literary culture that I have read in a long time. A closely written and argued discussion of theories of literary influence in a nineteenth-century context, it ranges widely and makes always interesting and sometimes brilliant connections...This is a major work of Victorian literary criticism, and a book to be read over and over again for its myriad insights and felicities.' -Tennyson Research Bulletin'Close readings unravel the manner in which 'dead' voices haunt Tennyson's poetry, and the author is uncommonly sharp-eared for nuance.' -Scotland on Sunday'Ambitious, delightful, frustrating, wide-ranging, often beautifully written... Its sheer range sets it apart from the usual academic monograph... refreshingly free of jargon.' -Angela Leighton, Times Literary Supplement'One of the enjoyable features of Douglas-Fairhurst's writing is its commitment to close reading. He can make a word or line come alive by a turn of phrase which resonantly prolongs its momentum.' -Angela Leighton, Times Literary SupplementThis major study examines a Victorian obsession with 'influence', the often unpredictable after-effects of words and actions, in fields as diverse as mesmerism and theology, literary theory and sanitation reform. For writers such as Tennyson, FitzGerald and Dickens, the idea is both a theoretical and a practical problem.Survival is not only what their writing critically examines, but also what it sets out to achieve.
Author: Sally Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415668514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1014
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Book Description
First published in 1988, this encyclopedia serves as an overview and point of entry to the complex interdisciplinary field of Victorian studies. The signed articles, which cover persons, events, institutions, topics, groups and artefacts in Great Britain between 1837 and 1901, have been written by authorities in the field and contain bibliographies to provide guidelines for further research. The work is intended for undergraduates and the general reader, and also as a starting point for graduates who wish to explore new fields.
Author: Joseph Bristow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317807715
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
The practice of poetry in the Victorian period was characterised by an extreme diversity of styles, preoccupations and subject-matter. This anthology attempts to draw out some of the main focuses of interest in the Victorian poet. No Victorian poet produced an overall theory of poetry, yet all accepted it as a natural vehicle of expression, and for some subjects, in particular sexuality, the only literary mode. Indeed, the sexual question was made even more acute by the sudden phenomenon of the ‘poetess’, and the relation of poetry to gender raised interesting new critical questions. At the same time, the cultural role of the poet came under increasing debate: Victorian poetry was the first contemporary poetry to be studied. This selection of central texts illustrates these pressures on the Victorian practice of poetry, and the introductory remarks suggest ways in which theory can be related to the understanding key poems themselves.
Author: Virginia Blain
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317862937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
There has been a huge revival of interest in Victorian women's poetry in the last ten years, and it has led to a major reconfiguration of the English poetic landscape of the nineteenth century. This title offers a key selection of poems by 13 Victorian women poets from Christina Rosetti and Felicia Hemans to the witty, iconoclastic May Kendall. The book starts with a substantial general Introduction which places the work of the poets into a context both historical (that of the poems' production) and modern (that of their past and present reception). Each poet's work is introduced by an expansive headnote which tells the story of her life and writing career. The poems all have full explanatory notes to help readers unfamiliar with the period. A Bibliography lists general sources as well as useful further readings. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, the extensive annotations throughout Victorian Women Poets ensure that this fascinating poetry is enjoyable for undergraduate and non-specialist readers.
Author: Lori A. Paige
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476648158
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
Few stories capture the unique interplay of critical theory, mass media and public taste better than the story of the Spasmodics. These earnest, youthful and largely self-educated neo-Romantics hoped to become prophets who would influence literary society on a grand scale. From about 1850 to 1860, the Spasmodics successfully cast a long shadow over virtually every serious discussion of Victorian poetry. Many mid-nineteenth-century writers, including Tennyson, both Brownings and Matthew Arnold, were either adherents or outspoken detractors of the Spasmodic School. This work documents, in appropriate social contexts, the trajectory of the Spasmodic School in both its original incarnation and subsequent appraisals. Examining the various personalities and aesthetic principles that fashioned the movement, the author does not champion any particular critical stance or verdict. The scholarly apparatus cites a number of competing Victorianist interpretations, approaches and judgments with varying degrees of expertise.
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198929226
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Author: Clara Dawson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198856105
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Victorian Poetry and the Culture of Evaluation argues that the dialectic and dynamic relationship between the periodical review and poetry creates a culture of evaluation which shapes Victorian poetic form. The mediation of poetry by the periodical review orients poets towards public readership and reception, heightening their self-consciousness about their audience and generating a poetics of publicness. Using methodologies associated with historical poetics and new formalism, the book examines the dialogues between poets and periodical reviews from the 1830s to the 1860s. It juxtaposes male and female poets and canonical and uncanonical texts. Challenging the critical binaries of fame and celebrity, the culture of evaluation posits a new way of reading Victorian poetry. It illuminates poets' engagement with the immediacy and inevitability of writing for the present and for the contemporary media through which poetry was read and disseminated. New patterns of reception were created by mass print culture and both poets and reviewers were preoccupied with reaching the newly constituted mass audience. The changes to the material forms of poetry (e.g. through the periodical or gift-book) and the subjection to the commercial imperatives of the literary marketplace encouraged bold experiment with verse. The book identifies three poetic strategies for articulating the preoccupation with a mass audience and the demands of mass media: voice, style and address. Chapters on voice, style, and address explore the development of poetic form in dialogue with periodical reviews.
Author: Antony H. Harrison
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813918181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
With the publication of his ambitious new work Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture, Antony H. Harrison continues his exploration of poetry as a significant force in the construction of English culture from 1837-1900. In chapters focusing on Victorian medievalist discourse, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Christina Rossetti, Harrison examines a range of Victorian poems in order to show the cultural work they accomplish. He illuminates, for example, such culturally prominent Victorian mythologies as the exaltation of motherhood, the Romanic appropriation of transcendent art, and the idealization of the gypsy as a culturally alien, exotic Other. His investigation of the ways in which the authors intervene in the discourses that articulate such mythologies and thereby accrue cultural power--along with his analysis of what constitutes "cultural power"--are original contributions to the field of Victorian studies. "The power of Victorian poetry by midcentury was enhanced by the institutionalization of particular channels through which it circulated," Harrison writes. "poetry was 'consumed' in more varied forms than was other literature." Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture has implications for both cultural studies and the study of literature outside the Victorian period.
