Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Victorian Poetry The Victorian Period describes the events in the age of Queen Victorias reign (1837-1901). Victorian Poetry was an important period in the history of poetry, providing the link between the Romantic Movement and the modernist movement of the 20th Century. The poetry that we have come to call Victorian develops in the context of Romanticism. The birth dates of writers whom we identify as Victorian are not many years distant from those of the second generation of Romantics. Nonetheless, these earlier poets dened what was poetry for the young Tennyson and Browning. Although Victorian poetics came to distance itself from Romantic poetics, the rst generation of Victorian poets initially saw themselves as writing in a Romantic tradition. Had the second generation of the Romantics not died so young, we would not have so sharp a sense of division between these groups of writers. Nevertheless, the differences between both movements are easily distinguishable. Writers of the preceding era did not speak to a popular audience nearly as much as the Victorians, or at least not as self-consciously. The Romantic Movement was marked by introversion and abstraction; they were much less interested in commenting or altering the course of world events. Furthermore, the Romantics did not see leadership as a primary objective for art. Victorians, on the other hand, tacitly agreed that encouraging society toward a higher good was a righteous, noble occupation for any artist. However, many of the generalizations about Romantic poetry are found in Victorian Poetry: distrust of organized religion, skepticism, interest in the occult and the mysterious. Yet where Romantic poets made a leap of faith to assert that the received image of God did not exist, Victorian poets were more likely to have a scientific conviction of God's absence. For some, the fundamental changes taking place in the world meant progress, and were a source of hope and optimism. For the majority of writers and thinkers, however, the inequality present in Victorian society was a kind of illness that would sooner or later come to a tipping point. Many intellectuals saw it as their duty to speak out against the injustices of this new and frightening world. The level of social consciousness and immediate relevancy one finds in much of Victorian writing was something not witnessed before in English letters. Rather than turning inside or escaping into fantasy, essayists and novelists chose to directly address the pressing social problems of the day. These problems ranged from atrocious labor conditions and rampant poverty to the issue of womens place in the world what contemporaries referred to as The Woman Question. Elizabeth Barrett-Brownings long-form poem The Cry of the Children represents an attack on mining practices in England, specifically the employment of young children to work deep in the mines.

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Barrett-Browning had been outraged by a report she read detailing the practice and felt compelled to make her voice heard on the issue. Not surprisingly, women in the Victorian world held very little power and had to fight hard for the change they wanted in their lives. What one thinks of as feminism today had not yet taken form in the Victorian Period. The philosophy of female emancipation, however, became a rallying point for many female Victorian writers and thinkers. Though their philosophies and methods were often quite divergent, the ultimate goal of intellectual women in the nineteenth century was largely the same. Poets and novelists frequently had to be coy when addressing their status in society. Victorian poetic style is often baroque; it is thickly detailed, it delights in alternative formulations; it is ornate and elaborate. Victorian Poets rie history and legend for characters and stories that ground and give resonance to thickly detailed representations of sensibility; they also seek in classical forms a way of elevating domestic realism. For many, the word Victorian conjures up images of over-dressed ladies and snooty gentlemen gathered in parlors and reading rooms. The idea of manners essentially sums up the social climate of middle-class England in the nineteenth century. Rules of personal conduct were in fact so inflexible that the Victorians garnered a reputation for saying one thing while doing another an attack that the next generation of writers would take up with vigor. In the world at large, change was happening faster than many people could comprehend. A surging global economy was orchestrated by the might of the British Empire. The nobility, formerly at the top of the pyramid in society, found their status reduced as agriculture lost its preeminence in the now industrial economy. Mechanization and steam power led to ruthless efficiency, while more often than not the poor suffered under the weight of the capitalist middle class. Being impoverished in Victorian England was unpleasant to say the least, but there were efforts underway to improve the lot of the poor. The Reform Bills of the nineteenth century extended voting rights to men who were previously disenfranchised but not, of course, to women. That would require years more of struggle. For all of the social inequalities which still persisted, the Victorians successfully undermined some of humanitys most timehonored institutions. Some writers greeted these changes with fear, and wanted desperately for society to check its relentless pace. Others embraced the new world that was coming into being, thrilled at the progress of science and society. Together, these voices comprise an important and sometimes overlooked era in English literary history. Types of Victorian Poetry

Epic poetry Domestic and Idyllic poetry

Lyric Dramatic monologue

Sonnet Elegy Hymn

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Lord Alfred Tennyson Lord Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, where his father was the rector. He was the fourth of twelve children. Alfred was a bright and talented boy, and the fine physique and manly good looks which characterized him as an adult were noticeable even at an early age. Until he was eleven, Tennyson attended a grammar school in the nearby town of Louth, of which he later had very unhappy memories. From then on, he remained at home, where he studied under the close supervision of his scholarly father. Tennyson demonstrated his literary talents quite early, and by the age of fourteen had written a drama in blank verse and a 6000-line epic poem. He was also interested in the study of science, particularly astronomy and geology. In 1827, a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers, containing works by Alfred and Charles Tennyson, as well as a few short contributions by Frederick Tennyson, was published in Louth. In 1828, Tennyson enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. Despite his intelligence and good looks, he was excessively shy and was quite unhappy. After a while, however, he joined an informal club known as "the Apostle" which counted among its members the most outstanding young men at the university. Here he was praised highly for his poetry, and he made the acquaintance of Arthur Henry Hallam, a brilliant young man, who was to become his closest and dearest friend. In 1829, Tennyson won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. In 1830, while Tennyson was still an undergraduate, his volume Poems, Chiefly Lyrical was published, but it made no significant impression of the reading public. That summer he and Hallam went to Spain with the romantic notion of joining a band of insurgents in the Pyrennes. They successfully delivered a large sum of money collected on behalf of the rebels, but there is no record of their having participated in any military engagement. In 1831, after his return, Tennyson was forced to leave the university without taking his degree, due to the death of his father. Afterward, Tennyson lived quietly with his family at Somersby. He spent his time working on his poems and engaging in various outdoor sports and activities. Hallam was engaged to one of Tennyson's sisters and spent a great deal of time at the family home, so that the two young men were able to be together often. In 1832, Poems by Alfred Tennyson was published, in which early versions of many of his finest pieces appeared, including "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "The

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Lotos-Eaters," "Oenone," and "A Dream of Fair Women." The quality of the poems in the volume was not constant, and many of them were overly sentimental or lacking in polish. As a result, despite the fine lyrics mentioned above, the book received a very harsh critical reaction. Tennyson had never been able to stand criticism of his work, and he was deeply hurt. For a long time he wrote nothing, but he finally resolved to devote himself to the development of his poetic skill. In 1833, Hallam died suddenly while in Vienna. The shock of this tragic loss affected Tennyson severely. He withdrew completely from all his usual activities and spent his time in mourning and meditation. During his bereavement he thought often about his affection for Hallam and about such problems as the nature of God and the immortality of the soul. During this long period of anguish and grief, Tennyson composed many very moving elegies and lyrics on the death of his beloved friend. These were eventually collected and published in 1850 and are considered one of the greatest elegaic works in English literature, In Memoriam: A.H.H. During the next few years, Tennyson continued to live with his family, which had now moved to London, and to apply himself to his studies and writing. He became engaged to Emily Sellwood, despite the objection of her parents, but felt it was impossible for them to marry because his financial resources were so limited. In 1842, a two-volume collection of his work appeared, containing many revisions of earlier poems, besides a number of excellent new ones, including "Morte d'Arthur," "Ulysses," and "Locksley Hall." At last Tennyson was recognized as one of the leading literary figures of the period and was acclaimed throughout England. At this time Tennyson lost his small inheritance through a foolish investment and suffered a serious nervous breakdown as a result. Upon his recovery he was provided with an annual pension by the British government. In June 1850, after an engagement of thirteen years, Tennyson and Emily were married. Later that same year Tennyson was appointed to the post of poet laureate, succeeding Wordsworth. Among the most notable poems he wrote while holding that office are the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854). Despite his fame, Tennyson remained shy and moved from London to a more secluded home. He worked intently on his Arthurian poems, the earliest of which had been published in the 1832 volume, and the first four idylls appeared in 1859. These rapidly became his most popular works, and he continued to revise and add to them until the Idylls of the King reached its present form in the edition of 1885. The remainder of Tennyson's life was uneventful. He and Emily had a son, whom they named Hallam. Tennyson was hailed as the greatest of English poets and was awarded numerous honors; he received an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1885 and was offered the rectorship of Glasgow University. In 1883, he was raised to the peerage by Queen Victoria and was thereafter known as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth. He was the first Englishman to be granted such a high rank solely for literary distinction.

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Among his friends Tennyson counted such noteworthy people as Albert, the Prince Consort, W. E. Gladstone, the prime minister, Thomas Carlyle, the historian, and Edward FitzGerald, the poet. All his life Tennyson continued to write poetry. His later volumes include Maude, A Monodrama (1853),Enoch Arden (1864), Ballads and Poems (1880), Tiresias and Other Ballads (1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Demeter and Other Poems (1889), and The Death of Oenone (published posthumously in 1892). He also wrote a number of historical dramas in poetic form, among which areQueen Mary (1875), Harold (1877), Beckett (1884), and The Foresters (1892). Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the most highly regarded poet of his period and the most widely read of all English poets. The quality of his work varied greatly, and much that he wrote is of little interest today, for he included in his poetry themes and subjects that were of intense interest only to the Victorians. Tennyson's thought was often shallow and dealt with matters of fleeting significance, but his technical skill and prosody were unsurpassed. Perhaps the most perceptive evaluation of his work is embodied in Tennyson's own remark to Carlyle: I don't think that since Shakespeare there has been such a master of the English language as I to be sure, I have nothing to say. Tennyson died at Aldworth House, his home in Surrey, on October 6, 1892, at the age of eighty-three. He was buried in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey, and the copy of Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, which he had been reading on the night of his death, was placed in his coffin. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett, was an English poet of the Romantic Movement. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in England in over two hundred years. For centuries, the Barrett family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labor. Elizabeth's father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, chose to raise his family in England, while his fortune grew in Jamaica. Educated at home, Elizabeth apparently had read passages from Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays, among other great works, before the age of ten. By her twelfth year she had written her first "epic" poem, which consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Two years later, Elizabeth developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life. Doctors began treating her with morphine, which she would take until her death. While saddling a pony when she was fifteen, Elizabeth also suffered a spinal

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

injury. Despite her ailments, her education continued to flourish. Throughout her teenage years, Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament; her interests later turned to Greek studies. Accompanying her appetite for the classics was a passionate enthusiasm for her Christian faith. She became active in the Bible and Missionary Societies of her church. In 1826 Elizabeth anonymously published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Two years later, her mother passed away. The slow abolition of slavery in England and mismanagement of the plantations depleted the Barrett's income, and in 1832, Elizabeth's father sold his rural estate at a public auction. He moved his family to a coastal town and rented cottages for the next three years, before settling permanently in London. While living on the sea coast, Elizabeth published her translation of Prometheus Bound (1833), by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus. Gaining notoriety for her work in the 1830s, Elizabeth continued to live in her father's London house under his tyrannical rule. He began sending Elizabeth's younger siblings to Jamaica to help with the family's estates. Elizabeth bitterly opposed slavery and did not want her siblings sent away. During this time, she wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), expressing Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy. Due to her weakening disposition she was forced to spend a year at the sea of Torquay accompanied by her brother Edward, whom she referred to as "Bro." He drowned later that year while sailing at Torquay and Elizabeth returned home emotionally broken, becoming an invalid and a recluse. She spent the next five years in her bedroom at her father's home. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a collection entitled simply Poems. This volume gained the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose work Elizabeth had praised in one of her poems, and he wrote her a letter. Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years her junior, exchanged 574 letters over the next twenty months. Immortalized in 1930 in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier (1878-1942), their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry. In 1846, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth's health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning. Her father never spoke to her again. Elizabeth's Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and written in secret before her marriage, was published in 1850. Critics generally consider the Sonnetsone of the most widely known collections of love lyrics in Englishto be her best work. Admirers have compared her imagery to Shakespeare and her use of the Italian form to Petrarch. Political and social themes embody Elizabeth's later work. She expressed her intense sympathy for the struggle for the unification of Italy in Casa Guidi Windows (1848-51) and Poems Before Congress (1860). In 1857 Browning published her verse novel Aurora Leigh, which portrays male domination of a woman. In her poetry she also addressed the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the child labor mines and

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

mills of England, and slavery, among other social injustices. Although this decreased her popularity, Elizabeth was heard and recognized around Europe. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 29, 1861. A Selected Bibliography Poetry The Battle of Marathon: A Poem (1820) An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826) Miscellaneous Poems (1833) The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838) Poems (1844) A Drama of Exile: and other Poems (1845) Poems: New Edition (1850) The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850) Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) Casa Guidi Windows: A Poem (1851) Poems: Third Edition (1853) Two Poems (1854) Poems: Fourth Edition (1856) Aurora Leigh (1857) Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems (1860) Poems before Congress (1860) Last Poems (1862) The Complete Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1900) Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Hitherto Unpublished Poems and Stories (1914) New Poems by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1914) Prose "Queen Annelida and False Arcite;" "The Complaint of Annelida to False Arcite," (1841) A New Spirit of the Age (1844) "The Daughters of Pandarus" from the Odyssey (1846) The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (1863) Psyche Apocalypt: A Lyrical Drama (1876) Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne (1877) The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1897) The Poet's Enchiridion (1914) Letters to Robert Browning and Other Correspondents by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1916) Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to Her Sister, 1846-1859 (1929) Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B. R. Haydon (1939)

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

Twenty Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd (1950) New Letters from Mrs. Browning to Isa Blagden (1951) The Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford (1954) Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh Stuart Boyd (1955) Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett (1958) Diary by E. B. B.: The Unpublished Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 18311832 (1969) The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845-1846 (1969) Invisible Friends (1972) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, 1849-1861 (1973) Anthology Prometheus Bound (1833) Robert Browning Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, England. His mother was an accomplished pianist and a devout evangelical Christian. His father, who worked as a bank clerk, was also an artist, scholar, antiquarian, and collector of books and pictures. His rare book collection of more than 6,000 volumes included works in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Much of Browning's education came from his well-read father. It is believed that he was already proficient at reading and writing by the age of five. A bright and anxious student, Browning learned Latin, Greek, and French by the time he was fourteen. From fourteen to sixteen he was educated at home, attended to by various tutors in music, drawing, dancing, and horsemanship. At the age of twelve he wrote a volume of Byronic verse entitled Incondita, which his parents attempted, unsuccessfully, to have published. In 1825, a cousin gave Browning a collection of Shelley's poetry; Browning was so taken with the book that he asked for the rest of Shelley's works for his thirteenth birthday, and declared himself a vegetarian and an atheist in emulation of the poet. Despite this early passion, he apparently wrote no poems between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In 1828, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace. The random nature of his education later surfaced in his writing, leading to criticism of his poems' obscurities. In 1833, Browning anonymously published his first major published work, Pauline, and in 1840 he published Sordello, which was widely regarded as a failure. He also tried his hand at drama, but his plays, including Strafford, which ran for five nights in 1837, and the Bells and Pomegranates series, were for the most part unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologuesespecially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbolare regarded as his most important contribution to poetry,

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. After reading Elizabeth Barrett's Poems (1844) and corresponding with her for a few months, Browning met her in 1845. They were married in 1846, against the wishes of Barrett's father. The couple moved to Pisa and then Florence, where they continued to write. They had a son, Robert "Pen" Browning, in 1849, the same year his Collected Poems was published. Elizabeth inspired Robert's collection of poems Men and Women (1855), which he dedicated to her. Now regarded as one of Browning's best works, the book was received with little notice at the time; its author was then primarily known as Elizabeth Barrett's husband. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861, and Robert and Pen Browning soon moved to London. Browning went on to publish Dramatis Personae (1863), and The Ring and the Book (1868). The latter, based on a seventeenth-century Italian murder trial, received wide critical acclaim, finally earning a twilight of reknown and respect in Browning's career. The Browning Society was founded while he still lived, in 1881, and he was awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University in 1882 and the University of Edinburgh in 1884. Robert Browning died on the same day that his final volume of verse,Asolando, was published, in 1889. A Selected Bibliography Poetry Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889) Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850) Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning (1895) Dramatic Idyls (1879) Dramatic Idyls: Second Series (1880) Ferishtah's Fancies (1884) Jocoseria (1883) La Saisiaz, and The Two Poets of Croisicv (1878) Men and Women (1855) New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1914) Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, with Other Poems (1876) Paracelsus (1835) Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887) Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833) Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers (1873) Robert Browning: The Poems (1981) Robert Browning: The Ring and the Book (1971) Sordell (1840) The Brownings to the Tennysons (1971) The Complete Works of Robert Browning (1898)

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

The Inn Album (1875) The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1868) The Ring and the Book (1868) The Works of Robert Browning (1912) Two Poems (1854) Prose Browning to His American Friends (1965) Dearest Isa: Browning's Letters to Isa Blagden (1951) Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas FitzGerald 18761889 (1966) Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise (1933) New Letters of Robert Browning (1950) Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: A Broken Friendship as Revealed in Their Letters (1937) The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846 (1969) Thomas Jones, The Divine Order: Sermons (1884) Anthology The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877) Drama Aristophanes' Apology (1875) Balaustion's Adventure, Including a Transcript from Euripides (1871) Bells and Pomegranates, No. IV - The Return of the Druses: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1943) Bells and Pomegranates. No. I - Pippa Passes (1841) Bells and Pomegranates. No. II - King Victor and King Charles (1842) Bells and Pomegranates. No. III - Dramatic Lyrics (1842) Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - A Blot in the 'Scutcheon: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1843) Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - Colombe's Birthday: A Play in Five Acts (1844) Bells and Pomegranates. No. VII - Dramatic Romances & Lyrics (1845) Bells and Pomegranates. No. VIII - and Last, Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy (1846) Dramatis Personae (1864) Fifine at the Fair (1872) Poems: A New Edition (1849) Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871) Strafford: An Historical Tragedy (1837) Bibliography:

Dbora Paolillo, Natalia Velzquez Ramos, Mara Ins del Valle

http://www.online-literature.com/periods/victorian.php http://english.columbia.edu/victorian-poetry http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/courses/3352f01/vic.html

Cronin, Chapman and Harrison; A Companion to Victorian Poetry http://www.poets.org http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/i/idylls-of-the-king/alfred-lordtennyson-biography