(6) Victorian Poetry.
(A. Tennyson, M. Arnold, R. Browning, E. Barrett-Browning, and the Pre-Raphaelites [D. G. Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, W. Morris, and C. Rossetti]).
T h e V i c t o r i a n P e r i o d (1830 - 1901)
[See "Background for Topics 6-11..."]
L o r d A l f r e d T e n n y s o n ( 1 8 0 9 – 9 2 )
L i f e :
- appointed poet laureate in succession to W. Wordsworth (1850)
- awarded a peerage (1884)
W o r k :
< admired Virgil (70BC – 19BC, = Publius Vergilius Maro, author of the epic Aeneid)
< Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881, author of Sartor Resartus [1833] and Past and Present [1843])
(a) a poet of the countryside
(b) a poet of the past, esp. the classical past: Idylls of the King (1859)
(c) author of poems on technological changes: confident in the evolutionary human progress x but: aware of the horrors of industrialism (slums, greed, etc.): “Locksley Hall” x but: “The Dawn”
(d) author of ‘newspaper verse’ = his slow, ponderous, and brooding mind had no time to brood in the composition: “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
> his lifetime: the most pop. of the poets x the Edwardian / Georgian period: repudiated x now: re-establ.
Early Period:
= melancholic and self-absorptive
- employed hypnotic echoes, repetitions, and subtle lyricism
- embodied himself in characters and their moods, delineated objects vividly = linked states of mind to the scenery
- produced no ‘descriptive poetry’ x but: was ‘creating scenery’
- preocc.: death-like states, death = a releasing experience
> “Mariana”, on a melancholy isolation through the consciousness of an abandoned woman
> “The Kraken”, “The Ballad of Oriana”, “The Lady of Shalott”, “The Lotos-Eaters”, & oth.
Poems by Two Brothers (1827):
- in collab. with his brother
> encouraged by a group of gifted Cambridge undergraduates = ‘The Apostles’, under the leadership of his friend Arthur Hallam (1811 – 33)
Mature Period:
< the traumatic death of A. Hallam, and his consequential mourning, relig. uncertainties, and extensive study of science
= no more simply debilitating melancholy x but: a desperate sense of exclusion by a private grieving, and a shift into the public realm
- the old mood of narcotic drowsiness balanced with:
(a) poems of urgent simplicity: “Break, break, break”
(b) poems of positive social direction: “Ulysses”, on the idea of progressive development; “Morte d’Arthur”, on a cyclic movement and historic renewal; & oth.
(c) poems of an implicit tribute to A. Hallam
The Princess: A Medley (1847):
= a long narrative fantasy poem
- set in a medieval past x but: with a present-day prologue
- conc.: women’s higher education
- princess Ida experiments with a women’s college with all M excluded x but: repents of her Amazonian scheme to be united with the prince
In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850):
= a long elegy, a tribute to A. Hallam as a friend and mentor
- conc.: our relation to God and to nature = both grief x belief in spiritual and physical evolution, exploration of doubts x assertion of faith, conflicting validities of the reasoning mind x feelings craving for present comfort, etc.
- incl. seasonal and calendar events suggesting the movement and measurement of time independent on the human grief
> early vol.: under hostile criticism as ‘obscure’ or ‘affected’ x but: I.M.: won him full critical recognition and the post of poet laureate (1850)
> remarkable not ‘because of the quality of its faith but because of the quality of its doubt’ (T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot)
Maud: and Other Poems (1855):
> “Maud”, orig. subtitled “The Madness”, a long experimental monologue poem, a love-poem x but: opens starkly with the words ‘I hate’; incl. both an exalted passion x a sense of a breakdown = displays the bitterness and despair its alienated protagonist feels twd society
> “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, a public utterance, vigorously combines a protest against and a celebration of the Crimean War (1854 – 56)
> “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”, a public utterance
Later Period:
= accentuated mannerism
- dignified blank verse difficult to describe commonplace objects while retaining poetical elevation
Idylls of the King (1859):
= a large-scale epic
< uses the body of the Arthurian legend [King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table: (I) the legend of Camelot = a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of Arthur and Lancelot, (II) the legend of the quests of various knights to achieve the Holy Grail = a Christian relic, (III) the motif of courtly love: Lancelot + Guinevere, Tristan and Iseuld, etc.]
- conc.: a vision of the rise and fall of civilisation
- Arthur’s court and its decay due to sexual betrayal = a paradigm for the failure of an ideal
- women = inspiration for men’s highest efforts x but: also their destruction
Enoch Arden and Other Poems (1864):
- in a cultivatedly artificial = ‘Parnassian’ language (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
> “Enoch Arden”, a long blank verse narrative poem on the everyday life in a fishing village
M a t t h e w A r n o l d ( 1 8 2 2 – 8 8 )
L i f e :
- son of Dr Thomas A. (1795 – 1842) = a clergyman, headmaster of the Rugby School, educational reformer, and the godfather of Victorian earnestness: demanded moral and social responsibilities, forced boys into adult decision-making before their proper time, etc.
- youth = dandy of a frivolous mind > geniality and wit even in his serious criticism
- middle age = inspector of schools:
(a) travelled extensively, experienced the middle-class life > criticized its dullness
(b) studied the schools of Eur. > criticized E education
(c) studied classical lit. > criticized E lit.
- later age = a professor of poetry at Oxford and lecturer touring throughout Am.
- aim: a system of education for the middle classes, good education = the crucial need
- an anti-Victorian figure x but: characteristically Victorian in his assumption the puritan middle classes can be changed
W o r k :
- conc.: how to live a full and enjoyable life in a modern industrial society?
- his non-fiction seeks to counter negatives x but: his poetry embraces negatives, worries over them, and attempts to redirect them twd some hope
- phases:
(1) 1850s: poetry
(2) 1860s: lit. and social criticism
(3) 1870s: relig. and educational writings
(4) 1880s: lit. criticism
P o e t r y :
- at his best as a poet of nature, his settings work to draw the meaning together: “Thyrsis”
- A.: his poems repres. the ‘movement of mind of the last quarter of a century’ = a sick individual in a sick society
- conc.: his own experiences of the loneliness as a lover, a longing for a serenity not to be found, despair in a universe with humanity’s role seeming incongruous (<=> Thomas Hardy): “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse”
- aim of poetry: to bring joy and make life bearable
- dissatisfied with his poems (“Empedocles on Etna”), attempted to meet his own requirements x but: failed (“Sohrab and Rustum”, “Balder Dead”, & oth.) and abandoned poetry after 1860
- aesthetic demerits: excessive reliance on italics instead of on meter, frequent prosy flatness x or over-elaborated similes when attempting ‘the grand style’
The Strayed Reveler (1849): his 1st coll.
Also wrote following poems of distinction:
“Empedocles on Etna”:
- dissatisfied with it as too expressive of a ‘depression of mind’
“The Scholar Gypsy”:
- a joyful celebration of the freedoms of an Oxford student’s escape from routine:
(a) = a gypsy rejection of the consequences of the urban civilisation
(b) = a poet’s attempt to escape into an idealised history
“Thyrsis”:
= an elegiac monody on the dead Arthur Hugh Clough (1819 – 61, poet)
- the soul of the dead poet required to act as an inspirer and bringer of joy to the world
- nostalgia for an idealised past: reminiscences of the Gr. and Rom. pastoral tradition
“Dover Beach”
“The Forsaken Merman”
N o n - f i c t i o n :
- conc.: to formulate ‘ideals’ to ‘heal’ a sick society
- culture = an open-minded intelligence to view life in all its aspects, incl. the social, political, and relig., and to cure the ills of a sick society
Essays in Criticism (1865, 1888):
= a 2-vol. coll. of lit. critical essays
- argues for the virtues of a plain style and for ‘high seriousness’: the poet = a serious thinker offering a guidance for his readers
> “The Study of Poetry”, studied the Eur. poetic tradition > praised the intellectual, philos., and educational enterprise of Fr. / Ger. x criticized the mentally foggy En.: E Romantic poets as provincial and lacking wide reading, Charles Dickens as a classic of philistinism, etc.
> “The Function of Criticism at the present Time”, lit. and lit. criticism = a force to produce a civilised society; the present confusions and uncertainties prevent an expressive modern poetry
Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Friendship’s Garland (1871):
= provocative socially critical tracts
- T. Carlyle and John Ruskin (1819 – 96, art and social critic) criticized the Victorian middle classes for their materialism and selfish indifference = immorality x but: A. criticized the ‘Philistines’ for their ignorance and narrow-mindedness = dullness
- civilisation constituted by the 4 ‘powers’ = conduct, intellect and knowledge, beauty, and social life and manners x but: the E society constituted by a ‘Barbarian’ aristocracy, a ‘Philistine’ bourgeoisie, and an unlettered ‘Populace’ = none of them possesses culture
- the pragmatic and anti-idealistic E present x but: the bright and classless E future, universally enlightened and with the narrow strictures of an inherited E ‘Hebraism’ (= Puritanism) balanced by sweeter arts of the ancient Gr.s
- incl. cajolery, irony, satire, quotations from the nwsps, and memorable catchwords (‘sweetness and light’)
- claims to offer freedom x but: lays down rules, enforces peace x but: suppresses the inconvenient, suggests the authoritarianism despising pop. culture, etc.
Literature and Dogma (1873):
= a relig. critical tract
- the Bible and church = a force producing a civilised society / culture x but: middle classes do not know how to read the Bible intelligently
- concl.: both the Bible / church should be preserved and properly understood
R o b e r t B r o w n i n g ( 1 8 1 2 – 8 9 )
L i f e :
= ‘Mrs Browning’s husband’ = during his marriage known for his wife rather than for himself
< P. B. Shelley > temporary atheism and liberalism, and permanent ardent romanticism [see his marriage]
- married Elizabeth Barrett, a 6 years older semi-invalid guarded by her tyrannical father, and eloped with her to Ita.
W o r k :
Content:
= philos. + relig. ‘teacher’: resolved the doubts troubling M. Arnold and A. Tennyson
- God created an imperfect world, a perfect heaven, and an immortal human soul
x but: aware of the existence of evil, preocc. with characters of murderers, sadistic husbands, and petty manipulators
- characters = connoisseurs (the Duke of “My Last Duchess”), artists, musicians, thinkers, and: manipulators
- characters of the past = bishops and painters of the Renaissance, physicians of the Rom. Empire, musicians of the 18th c. Ger. x but: problems of the present = problems of faith x doubt, good x evil, function of the artist in modern life, etc.
Form:
= experiments with language and syntax: grotesque rhymes and jaw-breaking diction
- the incongruities of language = a humorous and appropriate counterpart to the imperfect world
< John Donne (1572 – 1631, a Jacobean metaphysical poet) > often discordant style, unexpected juxtapositions, prosiness, and awareness of everyday realities x but: oth. Victorian poets, incl. A. Tennyson and D. G. Rossetti < J. Keats, J. Milton, E. Spenser, & oth. classical poets > elevated diction and subjects and pleasing liquidity of sound
<=> Victorian prose writers:
(a) prosiness
(b) the grotesque: “Holy-Cross Day” (<=> Dickens)
(c) psychological insights in devious ways in which our minds work, in the self-justifying contortions of the minds of sinners and criminals, and in the complexity of our motives: “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” (<=> George Eliot)
(d) ‘subtlety’ and ‘tact of omission’ (<=> Henry James)
Dramatic monologue poems:
- separates the speaker from the poet, makes difficult to discern the relationship of the poet x his speaker: “A Grammarian’s Funeral”, the central character = a hero or a fool?
- overhears characters in a self-revelatory, if scarcely truth-telling, soliloquy
- each character individual through his articulation, emphasis, pause, reiteration, and/or idiolect
- establ. a physical context through details, references, and objects
Poems with an identified persona as narrator:
- conversational directness, familiarity btw the addresser x the addressee
“Pauline” (1833):
= his 1st publ. poem
< P. B. Shelley = the most personal poet
> criticized for affliction with an ‘intense and morbid self-consciousness’
=> resolved to avoid confessional writings
D r a m a :
Strafford (1836):
= his 1st publ. play, a historical tragedy
> all his plays failed
=> resolved to write dramatic monologues to avoid explicit autobiog. through imaginary speakers, and to preserve the characters of drama
P o e t r y :
Dramatic Lyrics (1842): his 1st coll. of dramatic monologue poems
Men and Women (1855): reflects his enjoyment in Ita. = picturesque landscapes, lively street scenes, and monuments from the past (esp. Renaissance past)
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1864)
Dramatis Personae (1864):
> “Caliban upon Setebos”, one of his finest dramatic monologues, criticises Darwinism and natural (as opposed to supernatural) relig.
The Ring and the Book (1868 – 9):
= his greatest single poem in 4 vol., the culmination of his experiment with the dramatic monologue
< based on a legal record of a murder trial in the 17th c. Rome: a brutally sadistic husband accuses his young wife of adultery with a priest trying to rescue her from her husband’s tyranny, stabs her to death, and is executed
- employs a texture of voices: contrasts multiple points of view of participants and spectators, and opens up freshly complex vistas and new questions with each witness
- puts the reader in the role of an investigating magistrate probing the confessions and impressions
> anticipates later novels such as Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900)
Also wrote following poems of distinction:
“My Last Duchess”:
= a dram. monologue
- the duke speaks of his dead wife
“Two in the Campagna”:
< opens with a questioning voice reminiscent of J. Donne’s
- speaks of distinctness x not union, and agnosticism in love x not ideal convergence
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”:
= an elusive and suggestive Gothic poem
- medieval in setting, ominous and disturbing in its precise evocation of horror
< the title from Edgar’s song in W. Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605)
E l i z a b e t h B a r r e t t - B r o w n i n g ( 1 8 0 6 – 6 1 )
L i f e :
- unusually educated for a woman of her time: studied Lat., Gr., history, philos., and lit.
- married R. Browning, eloped to Ita.: deeply involved in Ita. nationalist politics
W o r k :
(a) early period: Romantic visionary narrative poetry
(b) mature period = contemp. topics, esp. liberal causes of her day, treated with a fervent moral sensibility
- responded to the topical issues of history, tradition, and politics of the Ita. experiencing a painful evolution into a modern state x R. Browning’s retreat into historical perspectives
(c) late period = the Risorgimento [= a movement to unify Ita. as a nation-state]
> her lifetime: the most pop. woman poet x the modernists: criticised for the inappropriate didacticism and the rhetorical excess of Victorian poetry x now: re-establ.
The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838)
“The Cry of the Children” (1843):
= a poem criticising the exploitation of children in coal mines and factories
- lit. = a tool of social protest and reform (<=> Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811 – 96])
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850):
< supposedly a transl. from the Portug. language x but: her orig. creation
= a sequence of 44 love-sonnets written during the courtship
- records the stages of her love for R. Browning and her private emotional awakening
Casa Guidi Windows (1851):
= a poetic sequence
- on contemp. issues: the Ita. political flux and its often contradictory nationalist aspirations
Aurora Leigh: A Poem in Nine Books (1857):
= a blank verse ‘novel’ = with its crowded canvas and melodramatic plot closer to fiction than to poetry
- the 1st work in E by a woman writer with the F protagonist identical with the author = a ‘female Prelude’
- on the growth of a woman poet’s mind, her conflict as an artist x woman, and her self-liberation by the poetry releasing ‘elemental freedom’
(a) a F artistic career: the artists = a young woman committed to a socially inclusive realist art, passionately interested in social questions, and longing for knowledge and freedom
(b) a M philanthropic career: the cousin interested in A. as a helpmate in his liberal causes
(c) digresses into oth. lives, repres. social issues conc. women from the feminist POV
- A. refuses a marriage proposal from her cousin to pursue a poetic career; rescues a fallen woman, they settle in Ita. and confront the chastened cousin
- concl.: visionary optimism
- B.: the present = a fit subject for epic poetry x oth. Victorian poets, incl. M. Arnold: the present = no actions heroic enough, and A. Tennyson: the Arthurian legend to repres. contemp. conc.
Also wrote: a transl. of Aeschylus’s (525 BC – 456 BC) Prometheus Bound (1833)
D a n t e G a b r i e l R o s s e t t i ( 1 8 2 8 – 8 2 )
- a painter and a poet of decorative and descriptive poetry = a poet in his painting and a painter in his poetry
- founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848)
- fascinated with the F face and body, idealised women both sexually and spiritually: woman = a supreme mistress, an object of desire and worship
- painting: women with dreamy stares as if breathless from visions of heaven x but: parted lips and voluptuous curves suggest an earthly kind of ecstasy => combines spirituality + sensuality
- poetry:
(a) early poetry = in the less elaborate Pre-Raphaelite mode: “My Sister’s Sleep”
(b) mature poetry = in a stunning polysyllabic diction giving an effect of opulence and density to his lines
- R.: art should be conc. with the beautiful x not with the useful or didactic, ‘colour and meter’ should be superior to ‘all intellectual claims’
> anticipated the later Aesthetic Movement of Walter Pater (1839 – 94), Oscar Wilde, & oth.
< J. Keats and Dante
The House of Life (1870):
= a sonnet sequence on the relationship of spirit and body in love
<=> Coventry Patmore’s (1823 – 96) The Angel in the House (1854 – 63), an adoring long poem idolising his wife in her domesticity
Also wrote following poems of distinction:
“The Blessed Damozel”:
= a fleshly x but: heavenly vision of a transfigured beloved from Dante’s Beatrice
- set in a heaven warm with physical bodies
“A Half-Way Pause”, “Autumn Idleness”, and “The Woodspurge”: landscape poems of a striking intensity of vision
Also wrote: The Early Italian Poets (1861), re-publ. as Dante and His Circle, a prose study of Dante
A l g e r n o n C h a r l e s S w i n b u r n e ( 1 8 3 7 – 1 9 0 9 )
- briefly involved with the Pre-Raphaelites x but: remained an outsider and a rebel
- characteristic by his radicalism, libertarianism, paganism, and distaste for Christian narrowness
- deep understanding of the forms and styles of classical culture
Poems and Ballads (1866):
= metrical echoes of and variations on Gr. poetry
> “Hymn to Proserpine”, spoken by the dying anti-Christian Rom. Emperor
> “Dolores”, reverses the Cath. notion of the suffering Virgin to ‘a poisonous queen’
Songs before Sunrise (1871): expresses his passionate political conviction for the Risorgimento
W i l l i a m M o r r i s ( 1 8 3 4 – 9 6 )
- revolutionised E design x but: his poetry lifeless, derivative, and long-winded
P o e t r y :
The Earthly Paradise (1868 – 70):
- retells tales from classical and northern sources, esp. the newly rediscovered Icelandic sagas
- attempts to create a pop. narrative art akin to G. Chaucer’s to unmake the false and artificial x but: his sophistication prevents his folksy aspirations
“Chants for Socialists” (1885):
= a sing-song ballad poem
- targeted at the Socialist politics
P r o s e :
A Dream of John Ball (1886 – 87) and News from Nowhere (1890):
= polemical fantasies
- uses the past to project an ideal into the future
- the latter a vision of a world freed from machines and mechanical thinking to release individual creativity
C h r i s t i n a R o s s e t t i ( 1 8 3 0 – 9 4 )
L i f e :
- daughter of an exiled Ita. patriot, younger sister of D. G. R.
- her father became a permanent invalid, the economic situation worsened, and her own health deteriorated => involved with the Anglo-Cath. movement within the Church of En.
- spent the rest of her life bound with strict relig. principles and with charitable work
W o r k :
(a) early poetry:
- in an escapist, dreamy, Tennysonian mode
(b) mature poetry:
- in a distinctive F voice
- genres: a pure lyric, narrative fable, ballad, and devotional verse
- her consciousness of gender criticises the conventional repres. of women in the Pre-Raphaelite art: “In An Artist’s Studio”, a sonnet
- combines sensuousness and relig. severity in ‘an aesthetics of renunciation’ = a poetry of negation, denials, and constraints
- reduces the self with a coy playfulness and sardonic wit x but: preserves for it a secret inner space: “Winter: My Secret” <=> Emily Dickinson (1830 – 86)
Devotional poems:
< George Herbert (1593 – 1633, a poet, orator, and priest in the Church of En.)
> “Up-Hill”, a question-and-answer poem
> “A Bruised Reed shall He not Break”, a dialogue poem
Secular relationships poems:
- emotional evasion and the failure of human sympathy = human alternatives to relig. consolation
- preocc. with the absence of certainty
> “Promises Like Pie-Crust”, mocking
> “Winter My Secret”, elusive
> “Remember”, ambiguous and mortal
> Song “When I am Dead my Dearest”, treats the human love in a Keatsian mode, with a take-it-or-leave-it quality
> “Autumn Violets”, reverses the idea of autumnal fulfilment, claims love in middle age as forced and inappropriate as spring flowers in autumn
Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862):
> “Goblin Market”:
= a seemingly simple moral fable for children x but: the style deceptively simple
- accumulative in imagery, restless in rhythm, both rhymed and half-rhymed
- on the relig. themes of temptation and sin, and redemption by suffering <=> S. T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
- strangeness <=> Lewis Carroll x but: a spiritual message
- climax: goblins force Lizzie to eat their seductive fruit, not from the Tree of Knowledge, but from an orchard of sensual delights, she resists
Sing Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872): rhymes of direct simplicity, for children
The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866):
= poems of alliteration and assonance
> “The Prince’s Progress”, an allegory of the unhappy uncertainty of emotional commitment
A Pageant and Other Poems (1881)
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Other Sources
Jelínková, Ema. Semináře: Britská literatura 1. ZS 2004/05.