Early Victorian Poetry

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EARLY VICTORIAN POETRY

Like the Victorian novel, Victorian poetry can be divided in 2 main phases, an early and a late period. In the first (from the accession of Queen Victoria to about 1850) emerged two poets: Alfred Tennyson (that was a Poet Laureate and an important lyrical poet with an interest for Anglo-Saxon subjects and topics) and Robert Browning.
This period is a reaction to Romanticism (is rejected) and a revival of poet form belong to precedent age and a new poetical expression. Now the poet represents the optimism of the age and partly the necessity of classical models, which were rejected by romantics.
• Tennyson and Browning
They were complementary (their characteristics were different) but their basic attitude was similar: broadly didactic and concerned with the age’s most pressing ethical problems (→ didactic and moral aim → Tennyson was more patriotic and pessimist, while Browning was more optimism and interested in Italian Renaissance).
Tennyson was more concerned with the individual in society, and his poetry was harmonious and of classical inspiration, while Browning was concerned with the individual as an eccentric, and his verse was more abrupt and difficult to follow.
• Late-Romantic tendencies
The early Victorian poets owe a great deal to their Romantic predecessors: for example, Tennyson was indebted to Keats’ verbal sensuousness, while Browning owes much to Shelley’s prophetic force.
However, the Victorian poets did not believe in a life vision. They were less confident that they could solve scientific and religious problems that were breaking down certainties that had lasted a thousand years (the Victorian prose had more success than poetry).
• Narrative verse
In this period developed a strong tendency to tell stories in long narrative poems (→ Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora).
• The search of new modes of expression
Victorian poets continued to use many Romantic or traditional forms (→ sonnet) but they made some technical innovations: the dramatic monologue (by Tennyson and Browning) and the long autobiographical poem.
• The importance of love poetry
A common theme of Victorian poetry was love. With Tennyson and Browning, love became again of paramount importance (as in 16th and 17th centuries). This reflected the age’s concern with sexual morality and with the definition of gender roles. Love poetry now, though less frank and exuberant, explored new areas of sensibility (→ frustration, coldness, matrimonial bond in Meredith).

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

Robert Browning was born into a rich family at Camberwell, near London. His father was a clerk interested in literature and arts. Browning was educated at home and he was a voracious reader. Browning lived almost continuously at home until his marriage at the age of 34. He liked music, sports, travelling (→ he was interested in voyages and to met other cultures → he went in Russia, Italy, Venice). With his love of the exotic and the picturesque he was a typical upper-class Victorian, sharing the values of his age though intelligently critical of them. He was interested in history and Realism. His life was more original and romantic than Tennyson.
Browning met his future wife, Elizabeth Barrett, in 1845. She was a famous poetess. The circumstances were truly Romantic: she was a semi-invalid, six years older than him and dominated by a tyrannical father. The courtship was conducted partly by letter and in secret. Finally they eloped to Italy in 1846 and lived there for the next fifteen years. They lived very happy (→ romantic marriage) in Italy. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861.
So he came back to England (in London with his son Pen) and became an important social and public figure. He never remarried and he died in 1889 in Venice.
• Browning’s originality as a poet
His poetry was very original. In his poems “the story is told by some actor in it, not by the poet himself” (→ first-person lyrics). This “actor” is a single character faced with ah ethical problem. The language is colloquial and the rhythm as abrupt as those of real live speech. Rhyme and alliteration are also used in an unconventional way.
• The dramatic monologue
His particular poetical technique was the dramatic monologue (it’s something belonged to theatre; it’s taken from Shakespearian tradition). The aim of this is: to study character’s psychology as related as sort of event of their life (→ characters are usually historical, existed people and belonged to Renaissance period).
The characteristic of this dramatic monologue are:
- it is recited by a first-person speaker
- this speaker is obviously not the poet but a historical figure
- it is set in a precise historical and geographical background (many are set in Renaissance and have Italian subjects)
- there is a listener who usually does or says little (usually doesn’t speak) but who is essential to the dramatic or theatrical quality of the piece
- it centres on a crucial point (usually an important event) or problem in the speaker’s life
(→ so speaker’s nature and personality)
- the tone and the language are consistent with the speaker, with his/her psychology and cultural level
- the language is made to appear colloquial and spontaneous (contracted forms, repetition, exclamation, rude expression…)
- the use of irregular or unusual syntax, punctuation and rhythm
The idea of drama is central because it represents a particular event of life.
• Browning’s philosophy
He was a profound and original thinker; he was influenced by Carlyle and Goethe and developed an idealistic conception of life in which evil was not-being, inaction, while value was to be found in a continuous striving towards good; this in a materialistic age such as the Victorian, was revolutionary. Today, Browning’s message appear more like a blend of traditional Christianity, Evangelical Protestantism, and a Romanticism tinged with common sense.
• Browning’s modernity
His originality was in his technical innovations. His unconventional use of language, syntax and metre as well as his conviction that personality is not a single aspect, but is rather a multiplicity of selves, often incoherently mixed, influenced the 20th century modernist poetry.
He was also a master of picturesque yet realistic description.

Text: MY LAST DUCHESS (pag. 201)

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

She was born near Durham to a wealthy merchant family. She was educated learning Greek and Latin (unusually for a girl of her time). She was a voracious reader and an early writer. Her tyrannical father kept her confined at Hope End, the imposing Moorish-style castle where the family lived. The official excuse for her was her infirmity (→she was semi-invalid). So her life was sad.
By the age of 39 Elizabeth was a well-known poetess (she was the only important Victorian’s poetess → the other are in prose → es: George Eliot). So she sometimes received visits of men of letters and younger writers. One of this was Robert Browning. Their relation was mainly epistolary for a year and a half, after which they secretly married in 1846 and eloped in Italy.
In 1847 she published Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 sonnets inspired by her love for Browning → it is the first Canzoniere written in England by a woman and from a woman’s point of view.
Life in Italy brought to Elizabeth both restored health and renewed poetical inspiration. She settled in Florence with her husband at Casa Guidi (→ Casa Guidi Windows, 1851, her famous poem inspired by the Italian Risorgimento) and there she died in 1861, being buried in the English protestant cemetery of Florence.
Her literary interests were always characterised by fervent ethical and social concerns. For example she wrote The cry of the children against the exploitation of children in coal mines and factories (→ her passionate interest in moral problems and in the suffering of other people). Then in her long poem Aurora Leigh she depicts the growing literary vocation of a woman (herself) at the same time touching on wider questions concerning women’s education and their role in society.
So she wrote sonnets and long poems about love. Then she was concerned with women and children’s problems.

Text: IF THOU MUST LOVE ME, LET IT BE FOR NAUGHT (pag. 209)

LATE VICTORIAN POETRY

It’s different by Early Victorian poetry because of this features:
- reaction to moral and literary Victorian standards
- continuation and modification of Romantic trends
- new tendencies that herald the modern age such as the detachment of the artist and the work of art from any ethical stance, and metrical experiments in the direction of free verse
In this sense the seminal movement was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded by a group of artists and poets in 1848. It had its roots in late Romantic sensibility, and at the same time it reacted against established artistic values (→ then Aestheticism and Oscar Wilde).
The most important members of this group are: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, W. Morris and C. Swinburne (→ cult of sensuality → sensual beauty). Those poets’ works were very different, but their common starting point was a profound dissatisfaction with current standards of taste, and an inspiration that can be defined as spiritual sensuality.
• Typical Victorians: Meredith
For a time he shared a house in London with Rossetti and Swinburne but both his subjects and his style are less revolutionary than theirs. He wrote a sonnet sequence, Modern Love (1862), on the failure of his marriage. It was the first time that this theme (typical of modern literature) had been sung in verse, and showed a new awareness of the changing social and psychological relations between man and woman.
• The anti-Victorians
A difference between early and late Victorian poetry is the different reaction of the public. While Tennyson was made Poet Laureate and Browning was revered as an oracle, public reaction to the new poetry and to the poets’ lives was often one of violent shock and disgust. Late Victorian poets were appreciated by small refined audiences but not by general public.

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD

In the 1848 the young painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, H. Hunt, J. Millais and T. Woolner founded the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”, so called because they advocated a return to the purity of late Medieval Italian art (→ Rossetti has in part Italian origins) , before the stylisation that set in with Raphael and his followers. Their watchword was “Back to nature!” → a return to the simplicity tempered with mysticism (→ not religious sense) of the Middle Ages (→ medieval things, thoughts and mitology), when spiritual values were held high and mechanisation had not yet destroyed individual creativity. They opposed to the materialism and ugliness of industrial England the legendary age of chivalry and of Celtic fables.
• Two aspects: sensuality and realism
Pre-Raphaelite painters reacted to the academic style by infusing their work with a note of languorous sensuality and a symbolism (→ symbol that climbing from Nature especially flowers) mainly derived from literary sources such as Dante’s Vita Nuova (because he was Italian and he wrote every kind of work). Their sensual veiled women, in languid poses, with their wasting sensuality, brought to light the existence of passions that Victorian literature had repressed (→ these works provoked great scandals).
The Pre-Raphaelite also believed in great technical ability as an antidote to superficiality of feeling and expression. They were obsessed with the detailed reconstruction of reality, to the point of exactly, reproducing the cracks in the wood of a piece of furniture or a newspaper’s text.
• The Rossetti family circle
The leading personalities in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family (the brother William Michael, a critic, and his sister Christina Georgina). Their father was the Italian patriot Gabriele Rossetti (from Abruzzo) who after the failure of the Neapolitan Carbonari insurrection of 1821 had fled to England. Their mother was half-English and half-Italian. Their household in London was a centre of artistic and literary discussion.
• A painter and a poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
He showed an early talent for poetry and painting. He read much Romantic literature and also Dante (→ he translated Vita Nuova in 1845). His first important poem was The blessed Damozel, inspired by Poe and Keats’ medieval compositions. Set in the Middle ages, it tells of a dead girl who looks down to earth from heaven and wishes to be united with her lover who is still on earth.
Rossetti’s private life was upset by the suicide of his wife in 1862. In 1881 he published The house of life, a collection of 101 sonnets on love and death, partly inspired by his wife’s death. A critic of his work increased in him a persecution mania that lasted till his death in 1882.
• A modern mystic: Christina Rossetti
Owing to precarious health she led a very retired life an though she started to write at an early age her first published work, Goblin market and other poems (1862). Her inspiration was mainly religious. She dedicated herself to reflection and she refused twice to marry. Her poems are full of passion but more restrained, simpler and more effective than her brother’s in clearly identifying the dualism of nature and spirit. The dominant note of her compositions is death (often visions).

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844-1889)

He was born at Startford (Essex), the eldest son of nine children. He study to Highgate School and then to Oxford. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1866 and then he entered the Jesuit Order. He was ordained a priest in 1877, and worked in many parishes (also Liverpool and Glasgow). After teaching at the Jesuit Seminary he became professor of Greek at University College in Dublin (where he died).
He was interested in poetry and he wrote for hobby. He tried to innovate poetry in the aspect of sound and images.
• Unpublished in his lifetime
His poetry was completely unknown in his lifetime because he never published his verse or even admitted that he wrote its. He thought that his interest in poetry conflicted with his vocation as a priest, and would distract him from his duties; but his superiors encouraged him to write and paint.
• Posthumous fame
The first edition of his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland, edited by his friend and fellow poet Bridges, appeared in 1918, thirty years after his death (→ in this year appeared Modernism → vigorous type of composition). Upon its publication Hopkins was immediately perceived as a man born before his time, a 20th –century poet in an earlier age that could not have appreciated the modernity of his talent. His poetry became fashionable and a considerable cult has surrounded his figure since.
• Romantic and Victorian background
In his poetry he was influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin and W. Pater. In his highly personal religious way he was still a late Romantic and his mystical and sensual vein directly from Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites. This poetical influence combined with Hopkins’ philosophical interest in the medieval Scottish philosopher Scotus, whose discussion of theology is based on a keen appreciation of the “thisness” of people and things (→ the individual forms that people and things take in the physical world).
So his poetry is a mixture of Romantic and Victorian elements. He was interested in religion and philosophy, so his works are very complex (→ he anticipated Modernism).
• God’s presence in the world
Hopkins want to render his experience of God’s presence in the world, its “thisness” in ordinary things → he use Keatsian poetry in a devotional or religious mode of literature. His poetry comes close to that of the Metaphysical Poets (→ Donne) in finding unusual connections between apparently unrelated things in the world, which indicate the presence of God in all things.
• A sensuous religiosity
Hopkins loves the appearance of God in the world, submits himself to it like a courtly lover to his mistress, and finds the meaning of his life in this submission. His own pessimism, and the terrible fits of depression he went through, found relief in the Catholic faith in God’s boundless mercy.
• Nature as the mirror of God
For Hopkins Nature is a source of inspiration and confortation → not in a pantheistic way but such as a God’s creation. Most of his poetry is religious, either because it directly praises or talks to God or because in nature he constantly sees and celebrates God. The physical world is full of God’s presence; man should interfere with it as little as possible and feel the joy it freely gives.
His experience in the suburbs of Liverpool and Glasgow convinced him that the industrial and mechanical world was not only ugly but also the product of man’s sins, of his getting away from nature and thus from God. Hopkins’ poetry thus appears as a religious restatement of Wordsworth’s discovery of nature and of Ruskin’s campaign against industrialization and mechanization.
• A great technical innovator
Hopkins’ real innovations are above all technical. He studied Old English and Welsh verse and came to the conclusion that it embodied the true, natural tradition of expression in English (→ he refuses the forms that are innatural for the human’s speech). His poetry is rich in the alliteration and assonance of Anglo-Saxon poetry. He was also contrary to the smooth and fluent rhythm prevailing in 19th century poetry and tried to model his metres on what he believed was the common rhythm of spoken English. To pursue this he invented a metrical system that he called “sprung rhythm” → it’s a stress-based metre where each line of verse is based on a regular number of stresses, or primary accents, and not of syllables, which can vary in number (sprung → sense of dynamism).
The main difficult of Hopkins’ poetry is language not metre, since his poems are built on nothing more than the Old English accentual line: a fixed number of stressed syllables and then any number of unstressed syllables in between.
This revolutionary invention was influenced by Old English (for him poetry is a sequence of words taken from the usual language).
• Inscape and instress
Hopkins also invented a terminology of his own. Its two main terms are:
- Inscape = the distinct pattern of each thing in the universe, giving it its individuality;
- Instress = the property to recognise the “inscape”, or distinctive pattern, of other beings. In a general sense, this is the quality that distinguishes man as the highest being in the universe; specifically, for the poet this means the effect that the apprehension of each “inscape”, or pattern, has on his imagination.
For Hopkins, the “instress” (apprehension, understanding) of “inscape” (individual pattern of things) ultimately leads one to God, for everything in the universe bears God’s divine stamp.
• Hopkins’s originality
He moved away from Wordsworth’s ideal of an ordinary language and he produced instead a magical incantation of sound and meaning, of newly-coined words and unusual syntax. On the other hand, modelling his metres on the common rhythm of spoken English, and thus disregarding syllabic regularity, Hopkins was moving in the direction of “free verse” that in few years modernist poets would adopt.

Text: THE WINDHOVER (fotocopia)