LATE VICTORIAN POETRY

LATE VICTORIAN POETRY

It's different by Early Victorian poetry because of this features:

reaction to moral and literary Victorian standards

continuation and modification of Romantic trends

new tendencies that herald the modern age such as the detachment of the artist and the work of art from any ethical stance, and metrical experiments in the direction of free verse

In this sense the seminal movement was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded by a group of artists  and poets in 1848. It had its roots in late Romantic sensibility, and at the same time it reacted against established artistic values (à then Aestheticism  and Oscar Wilde).

The most important members of this group are: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, W. Morris and C. Swinburne (à cult of sensuality à sensual beauty). Those poets' works were very different, but their common starting point was a profound dissatisfaction with current standards of taste, and an inspiration that can be defined as spiritual sensuality.

Typical Victorians: Meredith

For a time he shared a house in London with Rossetti and Swinburne but both his subjects and his style are less revolutionary than theirs. He wrote a sonnet sequence, Modern Love (1862), on the failure of his marriage. It was the first time that this theme (typical of modern literature) had been sung in verse, and showed a new awareness of the changing social and psychological relations between man and woman.

The anti-Victorians

A difference between early and late Victorian poetry is the different reaction of the public. While Tennyson was made Poet Laureate and Browning was revered as an oracle, public reaction to the new poetry and to the poets' lives was often one of violent shock and disgust. Late Victorian poets were appreciated by small refined audiences but not by general public.