Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poets and Politics

Mrs Isobel Armstrong, Isobel Armstrong9780415144254, 0415144256

In a uniquely comprehensive and theoretically astute study, Armstrong rescues Victorian poetry from its images as a “moralized form of romantic verse” and unearth its often subversive critique of nineteenth-century culture and politics.

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Table of contents :
EEn……Page 0
Victorian Poetry – Poetry, Poetics and Politics……Page 1
Preface……Page 2
Acknowledgements……Page 4
Introduction – Rereading Victorian Poetry……Page 5
Part I – Conservative and Benthamite Aesthetics of the Avant-Garde – Tennyson and Browning in the 1830s……Page 25
1 – Two Systems of Concentric Circles……Page 26
2 – Experiments of 1830 – Tennyson and the formation of subversive, conservative poetry……Page 41
3 – 1832: Critique of the Poetry of Sensation……Page 76
4 – Experiments in the 1830s – Browning and the Benthamite formation……Page 110
5 – The Politics of Dramatic Form……Page 134
Part II – Mid-Century: European Revolution and Crimean War – Democratic, liberal, radical and feminine voices……Page 160
6 – Individualism Under Pressure……Page 161
7 – The Radical in Crisis: Clough……Page 174
8 – The Liberal in Crisis: Arnold……Page 200
9 – A New Radical Aesthetic – The Grotesque as cultural critique: Morris……Page 226
10 – Tennyson in the 1850s – New experiments in conservative poetry and the Type……Page 245
11 – Browning in the 1850s and After – New experiments in radical poetry and the Grotesque……Page 276
12 – ‘A Music of Thine Own’ – Women’s poetry–an expressive tradition?……Page 308
Part III – Another Culture? Another Poetics?……Page 366
Introduction – The 1860s and After – Aesthetics, language, power and high finance……Page 367
13 – Swinburne: Agonistic Republican – The poetry of sensation as democratic critique……Page 387
14 – Hopkins: Agonistic Reactionary – The Grotesque as conservative form……Page 405
15 – Meredith and Others – Hard, gem-like dissidence……Page 424
16 – James Thomson: Atheist, Blasphemer and Anarchist – The Grotesque sublime……Page 443
Postscript……Page 460
Notes……Page 472
Index……Page 516