The poets of the Victorian Age

M.K.B.U. Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English.

Assignment sub.: The poets of the Victorian Age

Paper no.6: The Victorian literature

Name: Drashti v. Dave

Roll no.                  Year: 2014

THE POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE

Brief introduction about Victorian age: It is a modern period of progress and unrest. When Victoria became queen in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean year in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the Romantic age.

Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats and Scott had passed away, and there were no writers in England to fill their place. Elizabeth Barrett had been writing since 1820 but not till twenty years later did her poems became deservedly popular; and Browning had published his Pauline in 1833.

It is an age of democracy; it is an age of education of religious tolerance of growing brotherhood and profound social unrest. It is an age of comparative peace. Victorian age is especially remarkable because of its rapid progress in all the arts and science.

Literary characteristic:  first it is the age produced many poets, and second this is emphatically an age of prose and poetry. Seems to depart from the artistic standard, art for art’s sake.

Victorian age is emphatically an age of realism rather than of romance.

Poets of the Victorian age: Tennyson, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Swinburne.

Novelists of the Victorian age: Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans, Charlotte Bronte, Blackmore, Thomas Hardy, Stevenson.

Essayists of the Victorian age: John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold.

Prose writers of the Victorian age: Dickens, Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin.

POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE:

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

O young mariner,

You from the heaven

Under the sea-cliff,

You that are watching……

It is poem of ‘Marlin and the Gleam’ in it a suggestion of the spirit of the poet’s whole life. Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in England. He was a voice of a whole people, in wonderful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England’s greatest poets.

Life: Tennyson was naturally shy, restring, indifferent to men hating noise, and publicity loving to be nature, like Wordsworth. Tennyson published his first signed work called poem ‘chiefly lyrical’ In 1831 Tennyson left the university without taking his degree. His best known poem “crossing the bar”.

Works: Tennyson’s poetry is to be eternally young and fresh, wonderful and inspiring.

·       Crossing the bar, Idylls of the king, Akbar’s tomb, Each arden, The princess, In memoriam, Ulysses, Dora, Locksley hall, The lotus-eater, poems chiefly lyrical, poem by two brothers, palace of art, A dream of fair women, The miller’s daughter……

·       His earlier poems show too much of Byron’s influence.

Tennyson’s work ‘In memoriam’ which on account of both its theme and its exquisite workmanship. He wrote lyric after lyric inspired by this sad subject. The morality of human love is the theme of the poem. ‘The idylls of the king’ ranks among the greatest of Tennyson’s later works.

Characteristic of his poem:  Tennyson is essentially the artist no other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or with such singleness of purpose all the great writers of his age.

Tennyson’s characteristic of his age is the reign of order- of law in the physical world producing evaluation and of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect man.

In memoriam, Idylls of the king, The princess,- three widely different poems. Yet the theme of each so far as poetry is a kind of spiritual philosophy.

Tennyson was plunged into a period of gloom and sorrow, little poem ‘Break break break’ his first published elegy for his friend for his poems he became best loved poet in England.

Robert Browning  (1812-1889)

Browning is led from one thing to another by his own mental association about Browning’s obscurity he is careless in his english.

Browning shows himself capable at times of writing directly melodiously and with noble simplicity. The spirit f his whole life is well expressed in his Paracelsus written when he was only twenty two year old. He is not like so many others an extraordinary poet.

Life: He was born in camberwell, he eloped with the best known literary woman in England. Elizabeth Barrett was fame for many years both before and after her marriage, much grater than Browing’s and who was at first considered superior to Tennyson.

·       His earlier work had been much batter appreciated in America than England; but with the publication of the ring and the book. He was at least recognized by his countryman as one of the greatest of english poets.

Work: Browning gave to his best known volumes- dramatic lyrics, Dramatic romances and Lyrics, Men and women, Dramatics persona will suggest how strong the dramatic element is I all his work. His poems may be devided into three classes – pure dramas like, Stafford, dramatic narrative like, pippa passes which are short poems expressing some strong personal emotions.

·       Browning is often compared with Shakespeare. ‘The ring and the book’ is Browning's masterpiece. It is an immense poem twice as long as Paradise Lost and Leger by some Teo thousand lines than The Iliad.

·       Browning's place in literature will be better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson. His resignation is art times almost oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it suggests Schopenhauer in its mixture of fate and pessimism.

·       There is nothing oriental, nothing doubtful noting pessimistic on the whole range of his poetry.

MINOR POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE

Elizabeth Barrett

Among the minor poets of the past century Elizabeth Barrett ( Mrs. Browning ) occupies perhaps the highest place in popular favor. In 1835 the Barrett family moved in London where Elizabeth gained a literary reputation by the publication of The Seraphim and other poems 1838.

In 1844 Miss Barrett published her poems which though somewhat impulsive and overwrought met with remarkable public favor. Such poems as “The cry of the children” which voices the protest of humanity against child labor.

              The Exquisite romance of their love is reflected in Mrs. Browning’s sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).Her Casa Guidi Windows (1851) is a combination of poetry and politics both, it must be confessed a little too emotional.

In 1856vshe published Aurora Leigh, a novel in verse, having for its hero a young social reformer, heroine a young woman poetical and enthusiastic, who strongly suggests Elizabeth Barrett herself.

Her last two volumes were poems Before congress (1860) and last poems published after her death.

Browning’s famous line “ O lyric half angel and half bird “ this is  shows her ability in writing so she is most famous than Browning in Victorian age.

Rossetti (1828-1882)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the son of an exiled Italian painter and scholar, was distinguished both as a painter and as a poet. He was a leader in the pre-raphaelite movement and published in the first numbers of the German his “ hand and soul “ and his famous “ The blessed damozel “, these two early works, with its simplicity and exquistic spiritual quality are characteristic of the ideas of pre- raphalic school.

In 1881 he published his Ballads and sonnets a remarkable volume containing among other poems,

                            The confession, the ballad of sister Helen, The king’s tragedy- a masterpiece of dramatic narration and the house of life- a collection of one hundred and one sonnets reflecting the poet’s love and loss.

Pre- Raphalic school of poetry :

Three english painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Maillais, and William Holman  found a society in 1848 and it called pre-raphalic brotherhood.

They didn’t believe in ‘ art for life sake ‘ these poets created pure art known as ‘ art for art’s sake ‘

Pictorial poetry- picturesque poems subject matter for their poetry was romance and mysticism of the middle ages.

Rossetti and Morris both’s paint pictures as well in their poems as on their canvases, and this pictorial quality of their verse is its chief characteristic.

William Morris (1834-1896)

Morris is a most interesting combination of literary man and artist.

·       The earthly Paradise is generally regarded as his master-piece. His interest in Icelandic literature is further shown by his sigurd the volsung, an epic founded upon one of the old sagas, and by his prose romances.

·       The houses of the wolfing, The story of the glittering plain, The roots of the mountains, The dream of john ball and News from nowhere , are the interesting as modern attempts at depicting an ideal society.

Swinburne  (1837-10909)

·       Algernon Charles Swinburne is chronologically, the last of the Victorian poets.

·       As an artist-having perfect command of all English verse forms and a remarkable faculty for inventing new he seems at the present time to rank among the best in literature.

·       Stedman says: “ before his advent we did not realize the full scope of English verse.”

·       He has written very large number of poems, dramas, and essays in literary criticism.  His Atalandu in Calydon (1864) a beautiful lyric drama modeled on the Greek tragedy is generally regarded as his masterpiece.

·       His poetry is always musical and like music appeals almost exclusively to the emotions.

Conclusion:

Mrs. Browning, D.G. Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne-as representative of the minor poets of the age. Their wide range of thoughts and feelings eager search for truth and freshness and vitality all things they have given to English poetry.

                        Arnold was one of the best known poet of the age, but because he has exerted a deeper influence on literature as a critic. We have reserved him for specially the essayists.