The Perversity of Poetry: Romantic Ideology and the Popular Male Poet of Genius

Explains why poetry gave way to the realist novel as the dominant literary form in nineteenth-century England.

Once the dominant literary form, poetry was gradually eclipsed by the realist novel; indeed, by 1940 W. H. Auden was able to note, "Poetry makes nothing happen." In The Perversity of Poetry, Dino Franco Felluga explores the cultural background of poetry's marginalization by examining nineteenth-century reactions to Romantic poetry and ideology. Focusing on the work of Sir Walter Sco...