Victorian Poetry

1. VICTORIAN POETRY
MODULE 1
SEMESTER 3
EN1331 COMPLEMENTARY COURSE
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 3
SREEKUMAR V. R.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
NSS COLLEGE NILAMEL

2. ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

3. ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
 Poet laureate after William Wordsworth
 Representative poet of the Victorian Age
 In Memorium- elegy commemorating the untimely death of
poet’s friend Arthur Henry Hallam
 Expression of Tennyson’s religious philosophy
 Conflict of science and religion
 Philosophical acceptance of death
 Ulysses- reflects the spirit of the Victorian Age- to strive, to
seek and not to yield
 Other poems; The Lady of Shallot, The Lotos Eaters, Enoch
Arden, Idylls of the King
 Poetic features: pictorial quality, mellifluousness, musical
quality

4. MATTHEW ARNOLD

5. MATTHEW ARNOLD
 Dover Beach: the quarrel between science and
religion likened to ignorant armies clashing by night.
 Laments as being born between two worlds- one
dead and the other powerless to be born
 Melancholic view of life- people considered as “light
half believers of our casual creeds”
 Other poems: Thyrsis, Scholar Gypsy, Empedocles
on Etna, Sohrab and Rustum
 Rejects theory of Art for Art’s sake, considers high
seriousness and classical sublimity as hall marks of
great poetry

6. ROBERT BROWNING

7. ROBERT BROWNING
 Optimist, invented and perfected The Dramatic
Monologue
 Immense faith in human perfectibility
 Realized the agonies, failures and disappointments
of contemporary age, but welcomed them with a
spirit of optimism
 Browning instead of dealing with the issues of his
age escaped into the world of past
 Poems: Andrea del Sarto, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben
Ezra, My Last Duchess
 Found fault with obscurity of style

8. ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING

9.  One of the greatest women writers of Victorian age
 Aurora Leigh: long poem in blank verse
 Sonnets from the Portuguese: finest work, series of
sonnets
 Unique expression of a woman’s passion

10. PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
 Founded in 1848 by J S Millais and Holman Hunt
 To restore the old beauty of the painting that existed
before the time of Raphael
 Movement at first limited to painting and later
shifted to literature
 Important poets: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina
Rossetti, William Morris, A C Swinburne

11. PRE RAPHAELITE PAINTING OF D G
ROSSETTI

12. PAINTING OF RAPHAEL

13.  Dante Gabriel Rossetti  Christina Rossetti

14.  Propounded the theory of Art for Art’s sake
 Poetry not for reforming the society
 Escape from the ugliness of the contemporary society
 Perfect form and finish in poetic composition
 Characteristics: simplicity in art, pictorial quality, love of
middle ages etc
 Direct development of Romantic Revival
 Fleshly school of Poetry- Robert Buchanan

15. REFERENCES
 Radhakumari, K. A Concise History of English
Literature and Language, Delhi: Primus Books,
2013.
 Ashok,Padmaja. The Social History of England,
Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2011
 Blamiers, Harry. A Short History of English
Literature, London: Methuen, 1984

16. THANK YOU