The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism
Forms of Modernity
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:19th Sep '16
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Lyric poetry’s response to a crisis of relevance in Victorian Modernity This study explores lyric poetry’s response to a crisis of relevance in Victorian Modernity, offering an analysis of literature usually elided by studies of the modern formation of the genre and uncovering previously unrecognized discourses within it. Setting the focal aestheticist poetry (c. 1860 to 1914) within much broader historical, theoretical and aesthetic frames, it speaks to those interested in Victorian and modernist literature and culture, but also to a burgeoning audience of the ‘new lyric studies’. The six case studies introduce fresh poetic voices as well as giving innovative analyses of canonical writers (such as D. G. Rossetti, Ezra Pound, A. C. Swinburne). Key Features Challenges and transforms existing narratives of the modern formation of the ‘lyric’ genre through engagement with a body of work that larger-scale genre histories elideOffers innovative analysis of aestheticist poetry from the 1860s to the early years of the twentieth centuryProvides three fresh theoretical frames to examine the relationship between poetry and modernityIncludes case studies featuring a range of literary figures such as D. G. Rossetti, Alice Meynell, Thomas Hardy, Michael Field, Arthur Symons, A. C. Swinburne and Ezra Pound
Both densely and deftly argued, The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism is a significant addition to scholarship on late-nineteenth-century poetry and will reward repeated readings not only for the history of aestheticist lyric it traces but also for the thoughtful interpretation of individual poets and poems. It will prove of special interest to students of English aestheticism, the history of the lyric, and the New Formalism. -- John Lamb, West Virginia University * English Literature in Transition, Vol 61:3 *
Imaginative and wide-ranging in conception, energetic in it inquiry, and fresh in its diverse insights, The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism considerably advances earlier inquiries initiated by scholars. -- Julia F. Saville, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign * Victorian Studies, 59:4 *
This is a brilliantly conceived book, showing how Aestheticist lyrics, despite their frequent use of antiquated forms, actively engage with the concerns of modernity. In arguing that the rhetorical strategies adopted by these poems are not proto-Modernist but rather "post-Victorian"—self-consciously playing on earlier works, in the manner of postmodernism—Thain offers truly fresh insight, not only into this particular corpus of fin de siècle literature, but into the possibilities of the lyric genre itself. -- Erik Gray, Columbia University
ISBN: 9781474415668
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 595g
280 pages