Victorian Poetry

Unit thirteen closed the Romantic period on imagination at the centre of literature. This unit opens the Victorian age, which answered the Romantics. Its governing idea is that Victorian poetry turned from the self toward objectivity, social engagement and doubt, and that in an age of railways, reform and Darwin, the poets made the unsettling of faith their subject. This first part moves in three steps: the age, its industry and its doubt, with Tennyson; then Robert Browning's dramatic monologues and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets and protest; and then Arnold's Dover Beach, Emily Brontë's poems and the Pre-Raphaelites, closing as Hopkins arrives.

We begin with the age itself, its industry and its doubt, and with Tennyson, its Laureate.

First, where the period sits on the exam.

ENL 1301 The Victorian Period on This Exam

The Victorian period carries twenty percent of the questions. It matches Victoria's reign, eighteen thirty-seven to nineteen-oh-one, though some date it from eighteen thirty. This course gives it two units: the poetry, then the novel, prose and drama. Twenty percent; two units. The Victorians reacted against Romantic subjectivity.

Next, an age of industry and empire.

ENL 1302 Victoria's Britain: Industry, Empire, Reform

Victorian Britain saw railways, factories, slums and an empire ruling about a quarter of the world. The Reform Bill of eighteen thirty-two began extending the vote; factory and mine acts eased child labour. The anchor notes a self-image of "the white man's burden" that overlooked exploitation and racism. Railways, slums, empire, reform. Progress and misery coexisted.

Science unsettled faith.

ENL 1303 Faith and Doubt After Darwin

Lyell's geology measured the earth's great age, and Darwin's On the Origin of Species, of eighteen fifty-nine, made nature seem indifferent. A crisis of faith followed: some turned to positivism, some to Catholicism, and some to art. The anchor sees nature newly viewed as indifferent to every species. Geology, evolution, doubt. Doubt is a central Victorian theme.

Now the Laureate.

ENL 1304 Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, a rector's son, was shaped by his Cambridge friend Arthur Hallam, whose sudden death in eighteen thirty-three marked his work. He succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in eighteen fifty, and the anchor notes his affinity with the Romantics. Laureate, mourner, musician of verse. Tennyson's sound and sense are matched.

An old hero sets out again.

ENL 1305 "Ulysses"

"Ulysses," written in eighteen thirty-three in blank verse, gives the aged hero home in Ithaca, restless and discontented, resolving to sail again with his mariners. It ends, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." It has been called the first true dramatic monologue. An old hero sets out once more. The anchor notes he foresees only death.

A lady weaves behind a mirror.

ENL 1306 "The Lady of Shalott"

In "The Lady of Shalott," a lady in a tower near Camelot weaves what she sees in a mirror, cursed if she looks out. "I am half sick of shadows," she says; she looks at Lancelot, "The curse is come upon me," and drifts dead to Camelot. A mirror, a curse, a glance. It is often read as about art and life.

Tennyson mourned a friend.

ENL 1307 In Memoriam A.H.H.

In Memoriam A.H.H., of eighteen fifty, is Tennyson's elegy for Hallam in a hundred and thirty-three cantos of four-line iambic tetrameter stanzas rhyming ABBA. It moves from grief through doubt to faith, saying, "There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds." Grief, doubt, recovered faith. The In Memoriam stanza rhymes ABBA.

One phrase from it became famous.

ENL 1308 "Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw"

In Memoriam confronts the science of its day. In it, man trusts that God is love, though "Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed." The anchor notes the poem matches geological study to Tennyson's despair. A violent nature against a loving God. The phrase predates Darwin's Origin.

Two poems use the sea.

ENL 1309 "Break, Break, Break" and "Crossing the Bar"

"Break, Break, Break," written in eighteen thirty-five, mourns Hallam beside the sea in Lincolnshire. "Crossing the Bar," of eighteen eighty-nine, compares death to crossing the sandbar out to the boundless deep; Tennyson asked that it be placed at the end of all editions of his poems. The sea as grief; the sea as death. Crossing the Bar details have one source.

A poem honours soldiers.

ENL 1310 "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

"The Charge of the Light Brigade," published six weeks after the cavalry charge at Balaclava in the Crimean War in eighteen fifty-four, honours men who obeyed a mistaken order: "Their's not to reason why, / Their's but to do and die." Obedience into the valley of Death. The poem honours the men, not the order.

Tennyson retold Camelot.

ENL 1311 Idylls of the King

Idylls of the King, published between eighteen fifty-nine and eighteen eighty-five, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems retelling the legend of Arthur, from his coming to power to his mortal wounding. The anchor says it projected Victorian values onto Arthurian figures. Camelot rises and falls. The Idylls reflect Victorian morals.

Now the Brownings: Robert, who perfected the dramatic monologue, and Elizabeth, at first the more famous poet.

First, Browning's form.

ENL 1312 Robert Browning

Robert Browning, after a first poem criticized as too Shelleyan, turned to objective, dramatic forms, especially the dramatic monologue in Dramatic Lyrics, of eighteen forty-two. The anchor defines it: a single speaker, an audience and an action that deepens our understanding of the speaker's mind. Speaker, listener, revelation. The speaker is not Browning.

A duke shows a portrait.

ENL 1313 "My Last Duchess"

In "My Last Duchess," of eighteen forty-two, in rhyming couplets, the Duke of Ferrara shows an envoy his late wife's portrait. He resented her smiling on everyone: "I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together." He is arranging his next marriage. A portrait, a jealous duke, a hint. The duke reveals more than he intends.

A calm voice tells a murder.

ENL 1314 "Porphyria's Lover"

In "Porphyria's Lover," first published in eighteen thirty-six and later grouped as one of the "Madhouse Cells," a man strangles his lover with her own hair to keep the moment she is his, then sits calmly beside her body. The anchor notes his anger at her social superiority. A calm voice, a murder. The calm narration is the horror.

A dying bishop plans his tomb.

ENL 1315 "The Bishop Orders His Tomb"

In "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," a dying Renaissance bishop, opening "Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!", instructs his illegitimate sons on a lavish tomb to outdo his rival, old Gandolf. His worldliness, greed and envy betray the faith he preaches. A deathbed, a tomb, a rival. The irony is his vanity about vanity.

Two monologues are about painting.

ENL 1316 "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Andrea del Sarto"

Two monologues from Men and Women, of eighteen fifty-five, speak for Renaissance painters. Fra Lippo Lippi, a lively monk, defends painting the real world. Andrea del Sarto, "The Faultless Painter," a timid master, admits, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for?" A realist monk; a faultless failure. Both poems are about art.

One murder, told many times.

ENL 1317 The Ring and the Book

The Ring and the Book, published in eighteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine, retells a murder trial in Rome in sixteen ninety-eight. Ten of its twelve books are dramatic monologues by different people in the case, each giving a different account of the same events. One murder, many monologues. The form shows truth as relative.

Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

ENL 1318 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett, an invalid confined by a protective father, was famous enough to be suggested as Poet Laureate. Robert Browning wrote to her in admiration; they married secretly and moved to Italy. Her work addressed women's rights, child labour, abolition and Italian independence. Invalid, poet, reformer. She was the more famous poet at first.

She wrote a sequence of courtship.

ENL 1319 Sonnets From the Portuguese

Sonnets from the Portuguese, published in eighteen fifty, are forty-four love sonnets recording her courtship by Browning. The most famous begins, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." The anchor notes she takes on the most male-dominated of poetic forms. Forty-four sonnets of courtship. A woman claims the sonnet sequence.

She also wrote a novel in verse.

ENL 1320 Aurora Leigh

Aurora Leigh, of eighteen fifty-six, is a verse novel in nine books of blank verse about a woman poet. The anchor calls it a hybrid novel-poem that depicts the limits placed on women's public and private ambitions. A woman poet's life in blank verse. Verse novel: a novel told in verse.

She protested child labour.

ENL 1321 "The Cry of the Children"

"The Cry of the Children" protests child labour in mines and factories: "Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, / Ere the sorrow comes with years?" It contrasts young lambs and birds at play with children worn out by work. Children weeping, not playing. The poem is social protest.

Now Arnold's doubt, Emily Brontë's fearless faith, and the Pre-Raphaelites' return to the Middle Ages.

First, Arnold the poet.

ENL 1322 Matthew Arnold the Poet

Matthew Arnold, son of Rugby's headmaster, became Oxford's Professor of Poetry and an inspector of schools. His poems voice isolation, the wish for genuine connection and despair at the crisis of faith. In middle age he turned to criticism. Isolation, doubt, then prose. Arnold the critic is in unit fifteen.

His most famous poem hears a sea.

ENL 1323 "Dover Beach"

In "Dover Beach," published in eighteen sixty-seven, the speaker hears in the waves "The eternal note of sadness." "The Sea of Faith" once full now makes a "long, withdrawing roar." He asks, "Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!" for the world is "a darkling plain." A retreating sea of faith. Love is the only refuge offered.

A novelist also wrote poems.

ENL 1324 Emily Brontë's Poems

Emily Brontë, with her sisters, wrote of imaginary kingdoms, and published Poems in eighteen forty-six as Ellis Bell. Her poems, such as "No coward soul is mine," voice a fierce, independent spiritual vision; the anchor ties them to the crisis of faith and to Wuthering Heights. A fearless, solitary faith. Her poems share the novel's intensity.

Painters and poets formed a brotherhood.

ENL 1325 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in eighteen forty-eight by Holman Hunt, Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others, rejected art after Raphael and sought truth to nature in minute, symbolic detail. Its journal was The Germ. The anchor ties it to Ruskin's admiration for medieval unity. Painters and poets; minute detail; the Middle Ages. It was a movement in painting and poetry.

One was painter and poet.

ENL 1326 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet, published "The Blessed Damozel" in The Germ and wrote the sonnet sequence The House of Life. The anchor records that he buried his poems in his wife Elizabeth Siddal's grave, then had them recovered; a critic attacked his verse as "fleshly." Painter-poet, sonnets, sensuous detail. The "fleshly" attack shows Victorian unease.

His sister wrote devotional verse.

ENL 1327 Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel's sister, an unofficial Pre-Raphaelite and a devout believer, wrote devotional and romantic poems, including "Remember" and the carol "In the Bleak Midwinter," and poems for children. The anchor notes her metrical mastery and painterly detail. Devotion, precision, music. Her faith shapes most of her poems.

Her best-known poem is a fairy tale.

ENL 1328 "Goblin Market"

"Goblin Market," of eighteen sixty-two, tells of sisters Laura and Lizzie tempted by goblin men's cry, "Come buy, come buy." Laura eats and wastes away; Lizzie resists, and Laura is saved by her sister's sacrifice. The anchor reads its religious imagery of temptation and redemption. Forbidden fruit; a sister's rescue. The fairy-tale form carries religious meaning.

Another was a craftsman.

ENL 1329 William Morris

William Morris, poet, designer and socialist, wrote The Defence of Guenevere and the utopian News from Nowhere. He founded the firm that became Morris and Company and led the Arts and Crafts Movement, promoting handmade work against the factory system. Poet, craftsman, socialist. Morris's medievalism is social.

One was a scandal.

ENL 1330 Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote the verse drama Atalanta in Calydon, on the model of Greek tragedy, and the Pre-Raphaelite Poems and Ballads of eighteen sixty-six. His work caused scandal but had defenders, and it influenced the Aesthetic and Decadent poets of the century's end. Musical, daring, scandalous. He links Pre-Raphaelites to the Decadents.

One Victorian waited decades for print.

ENL 1331 Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a convert who became a Jesuit priest, developed "inscape," the distinctive design of each thing, after Duns Scotus, and "sprung rhythm," which counts stresses and lets unstressed syllables vary. His poems were published only in nineteen eighteen, by Robert Bridges. Inscape, sprung rhythm, late publication. Hopkins was published in the twentieth century.

This first part followed poetry turning toward doubt. We described Victoria's Britain of railways, slums and empire, and the doubt that followed geology and evolution. We read Tennyson from Ulysses and the Lady of Shalott to In Memoriam's nature red in tooth and claw. We read Browning's monologues for what the speaker reveals, from the jealous duke to the dying bishop. We described Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnets, her verse novel and her protest. And we read Dover Beach and met Emily Brontë, the Pre-Raphaelites, Morris, Swinburne, and finally Hopkins. Part two turns to Hopkins's poems and the methods.