This engaging volume provides readers with the essential criticism on nineteenth-century poetry, organised around key areas of debate in the field. The critical texts included in this volume reflect both a traditional and modern emphasis on the study of poetry in the long nineteenth century. These are then tied up by a newly written essay summarising the ideas and encouraging further study and debate.
- sections on Periodization; What is Poetry?'; Politics; Prosody; Forms; Emotion, feeling, affect; Religion; Sexuality; and Science
- work by writers such as William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins
- critics and historians including Isobel Armstrong, Richard Cronin, Jason Rudy, Joseph Bristow and Gillian Beer
- Detailed introductions and critical commentary by Francis O'Gorman, Rosie Miles, Stefano Evangelisto, Natalie Hoffman, Martin Dubois, Gregory Tate
Table of Contents
Introduction, Emma Mason
Part 1: Periodization
Introduction, Francis O’Gorman
1. Preface to Poems, Matthew Arnold
2. Romanticism as a "Modern Tradition", Robert Langbaum
3. Poetry and its Times, Matthew Reynolds
4. Rhythm and Will, Matthew Campbell
5. E. C. Stedman and the Invention of Victorian Poetry, Michael C. Cohen
Part 2: ‘What is poetry?’
Introduction, Rosie Miles
6. A Defence of Poetry, P. B. Shelley
7. What is poetry?, J. S. Mill
8. Introduction, Eric Griffiths
9. What kind of a critical category is "women’s poetry"?, Marion Thain
10. Female Picturesque and Colonial Settings in the Gift Books, Serena Baiesi
Part 3: Politics
Introduction, Ankhi Mukherjee
11. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Angela Leighton
12. Introduction, Isobel Armstrong
13. Introduction, Mike Sanders
14. Introduction, Matthew Bevis
15. Introduction, Mary Ellis Gibson
Part 4: Prosody
Introduction, Natalie Hoffman
16. XVIII: Language of Metrical Composition, S. T. Coleridge
17. English Metrical Law, Coventry Patmore
18. Investigation of Sound as Artistic Material, Sidney Lanier
19. Prosody Wars, Meredith Martin
20. Rhyme's End, Adela Pinch
Part 5: Forms
Introduction, Martin Dubois
21. Poetics, E. S. Dallas
22. Ancient or Modern, Ancient and Modern, J. R. Watson
23. Introduction, Herbert Tucker
24. The Sonnet and the Lyric Sequence, Joseph Phelan
25. The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue, Richard Cronin
Part 6: Emotion, feeling, affect
Introduction: Emma Mason
26. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth
27. Lecture 1, John Keble
28. The role and treatment of emotion in Victorian criticism of poetry, Isobel Armstrong
29. Coleridge to Wilde, Adam Potkay
30. Soul: Inside Hopkins, William Cohen
Part 7: Religion
Introduction: Jonathan Herapath
31. Tracts 80 and 87: On Reserve, Isaac Williams
32. The Face of the Deep, Christina Rossetti
33. Hopkins, J. Hillis Miller
34. Robert Browning’s Sacred and Legendary Art, Charles LaPorte
35. Introduction, Kirstie Blair
Part 8: Sexuality
Introduction, Stefano Evangelisto
36. The Poetry of Sorrow, Manley Hopkins
37. The Fleshly School of Poetry, Robert Buchanan
38. Sexual Inversion: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock Ellis
39. Wilde’s fatal effeminacy, Joseph Bristow
40. Introduction, Yopie Prins
Part 9. Science
Introduction, Gregory Tate
41. Science Versus Poetry, William Chambers and Robert Chambers
42. Thoughts on a Pebble, or a First Lesson in Geology, G. A. Mantell
43. Helmholtz, Tyndall, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Leaps of the Prepared Imagination, Gillian Beer
44. Introduction, Jason Rudy
45. Poetry and Science & Nature as Culture, Culture as Society, Ashton Nichols
