Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry

by Matthew Campbell

Overview

Matthew Campbell explores the work of four Victorian poets—Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy—in the context of their concern with questions of human agency and will. Through close study of meter, rhyme and rhythm, Campbell reveals how closely, for these poets, questions of poetics are related to issues of psychology, ethics and social change. He goes on to discuss more general questions of poetics, from Milton through Romanticism and into contemporary critical debate, making a major contribution to the current renewal of interest in formalist readings of poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521604222
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2004
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #22
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.67(d)

Table of Contents

1. Two decisions; Part I. Rhythm and Will: 2. 'Will' and rhythm; 3. Tennyson, Browning and the absorbing soul; Part II. Monologue and Monodrama: 4. Browning and the element of action; 5. 'Tis well that I should bluster': Tennyson's monologues; Part III. Making a Will: 6. The drift of In Memoriam; 7. Incarnating elegy in The Wreck of the Deutschland; 8. The mere continuator: Thomas Hardy and the end of elegy.

Editorial Reviews

"...a perceptive study...valuable commentary on crucial Victorian poems..." Victorian Periodicals Review

From the Publisher