
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Unofficial Laureate
Manchester University Press
Published on 11. January 2013
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-7190-8625-0 (ISBN)
Description
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), dramatist, novelist and critic, was late Victorian England's unofficial Poet Laureate. Swinburne was admired by his contemporaries for his technical brilliance, his facility with classical and medieval forms, and his courage in expressing his sensual, erotic imagination. He was one of the most important Victorian poets, the founding figure for British aestheticism, and the dominant influence for fin-de-siecle and many modernist poets. This collection of eleven new essays by leading international scholars offers a thorough revaluation of this fascinating and complex figure. It situates him in the light of current critical work on cosmopolitanism, politics, form, Victorian Hellenism, gender and sexuality, the arts, and aestheticism and its contested relation to literary modernism. The essays in this collection reassess Swinburne's work and reconstruct his vital and often provocative contribution to the Victorian cultural debate. -- .
Reviews / Votes
Candid, ambitious and sympathetic, this is a confident and often eloquent volume on a writer who keeps resisting the explanations that we are told best account for him. Immaculately edited, it earns its place among the best of modern writing in Algernon Charles Swinburne - poet and enigma.Francis O'Gorman, Times Literary Supplement, Mischief and other minds, 10/01/2014
|It encourages those interested in Swinburne's work to read him in many different ways and take part in the effort of mapping his vast poetic and critical corpus.
, Yisrael Levin, English Literature in Transition 1880 - 1920, 2014
'The chapters provide an enriching blend of perspectives that, to varying degrees, pivot on the ways 'sexuality itself might help shape, inform, or condition style, poetics, and other aspects of literary practice'. The essays collected in Unofficial Laureate... will be of immense benefit to students, experts, and dilettantes of Swinburne. They are set to cast a long shadow, to galvanize and update Swinburne studies, reigniting the slow-burning interest in this underrated Victorian poet and his work.'
Kostas Boyiopoulos, Durham University -- .
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Illustrations, black & white
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
521 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7190-8625-0 (9780719086250)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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E-Book
10/2017
1st Edition
Manchester University Press
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Persons
Catherine Maxwell is Professor of Victorian Literature at Queen Mary, University of London|Stefano Evangelista is Fellow and Tutor in English at Trinity College, University of Oxford. -- .
Content
Introduction - Catherine Maxwell and Stefano Evangelista
Cultural Discourse
1. Swinburne's French voice: cosmopolitanism and cultural mediation in aesthetic criticism - Stefano Evangelista
2. Swinburne's swimmers: from insular peace to the Anglo-Boer War - Julia F. Saville
3. Swinburne: a nineteenth-century Hellene? - Charlotte Ribeyrol
4. 'A juggler's trick'? Swinburne and journalism 1857-75 - Laurel Brake
Form
5. Metrical discipline: Algernon Swinburne on 'The Flogging Block' - Yopie Prins
6. What goes around: A Century of Roundels - Herbert Tucker
7. Desire lines: Swinburne and lyric crisis - Marion Thain
Influence
8. 'Good Satan': the unlikely poetic affinity of Swinburne and Christina Rossetti - Dinah Roe
9. Parleying with Robert Browning: Swinburne's aestheticism, blasphemy, and the dramatic monologue - Sara Lyons
10. Whose muse? Sappho, Swinburne, and Amy Lowell - Sarah Parker
11. Atmosphere and absorption: Swinburne, Eliot, Drinkwater - Catherine Maxwell
Index -- .
Cultural Discourse
1. Swinburne's French voice: cosmopolitanism and cultural mediation in aesthetic criticism - Stefano Evangelista
2. Swinburne's swimmers: from insular peace to the Anglo-Boer War - Julia F. Saville
3. Swinburne: a nineteenth-century Hellene? - Charlotte Ribeyrol
4. 'A juggler's trick'? Swinburne and journalism 1857-75 - Laurel Brake
Form
5. Metrical discipline: Algernon Swinburne on 'The Flogging Block' - Yopie Prins
6. What goes around: A Century of Roundels - Herbert Tucker
7. Desire lines: Swinburne and lyric crisis - Marion Thain
Influence
8. 'Good Satan': the unlikely poetic affinity of Swinburne and Christina Rossetti - Dinah Roe
9. Parleying with Robert Browning: Swinburne's aestheticism, blasphemy, and the dramatic monologue - Sara Lyons
10. Whose muse? Sappho, Swinburne, and Amy Lowell - Sarah Parker
11. Atmosphere and absorption: Swinburne, Eliot, Drinkwater - Catherine Maxwell
Index -- .