Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry

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Cambridge University Press, Apr 22, 1999 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages
In Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry, first published in 1999, Matthew Campbell explores the work of four Victorian poets - Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy - as they show a consistent and innovative concern with questions of human agency and will. The Victorians saw the virtues attendant upon a strong will as central to themselves and to their culture, and Victorian poetry strove to find an aesthetic form to represent this sense of the human will. Through close study of the metre, rhyme and rhythm of a wide range of poems - including monologue, lyric and elegy - Campbell reveals how closely technical questions of poetics are related, in the work of these poets, to issues of psychology, ethics and social change. He goes on to discuss more general questions of poetics, and the implications of the achievement of the Victorian poets in a wider context, from Milton through Romanticism and into contemporary critical debate.
 

Contents

two decisions
1
PART ONE Rhythms of will
13
PART TWO Monologue and monodrama
97
PART THREE Making a will
155
Notes
239
Bibliography
259
Index
269
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