Description
Book SynopsisReading Victorian Poetry offers close readings of poems from the Victorian era by a highly renowned scholar. The selection includes a range of canonical and lesser known writers.
Trade Review“Richard Cronin’s exceptionally fine book carries out just what its title promises – reading. The pleasure of his adroit, meticulously imaginative insights into verbal and metrical effects is constant … One of the best general readings of Victorian poetry in the last ten years.” Victorian Studies
“Reading Victorian Poetry will make an excellent introduction to Victorian poetry and gives a good account of a number of key issues.” English Studies
“[A] compelling new critical survey of the period’s poems … Cronin’s deft close readings enable … shifts and juxtapositions, and the assured breadth of his knowledge and reference … It is a definite strength of Cronin’s approach that his own book’s attempt to recover ways of appreciating and understanding Victorian poetry overlaps with the techniques Victorian poets themselves used to address and forestall their anxieties about the meaning and value of their work. [It] proves to be a good way of tuning in to the distinctive music of the Victorian poem.” The Tennyson Society
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: The Victorian Poetry Palace 1
2 The Divided Self and the Dramatic Monologue 27
3 Victorian Metrics 65
4 Short Poems, Long Poems and the Victorian Sonnet Sequence 89
5 Victorian Poetry and Translation 114
6 Victorian Poetry and Life 141
7 Poetry and Religion 174
8 Conclusion: The 1890s 196
Bibliography 220
Index 229
