Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart is a significant and timely study of nineteenth-century poetry and poetics. It considers why and how the heart became a vital image in Victorian poetry, and argues that the intense focus on heart imagery in many major Victorian poems highlights anxieties in this period about the ability of poetry to act upon its readers. In the course of the nineteenth century, this study argues, increased doubt about the validity of feeling led to the depiction of the literary heart as alienated, distant, outside the control of mind and will. This coincided with a notable rise in medical literature specifically concerned with the pathological heart, and with the development of new techniques and instruments of investigation such as the stethoscope. As poets feared for the health of their own hearts, their poetry embodies concerns about a widespread culture of heartsickness in both form and content. In addition, concerns about the heart's status and actions reflect upon questions of religious faith and doubt, and feed into issues of gender and nationalism. This book argues that it is vital to understand how this wider culture of the heart informed poetry and was in turn influenced by poetic constructs. Individual chapters on Barrett Browning, Arnold, and Tennyson explore the vital presence of the heart in major works by these poets - including Aurora Leigh, 'Empedocles on Etna', In Memoriam, and Maud - while the wide-ranging opening chapters present an argument for the mutual influence of poetry and physiology in the period and trace the development of new theories of rhythm as organic and affective.

Demonstrates how periodicals, newspapers, and annuals influenced Victorian poetry and offers fresh interpretations of central Victorian poets including Tennyson, Barrett Browning, Browning, Arnold, Landon, and Clough.

An overview of British poetry from 1830 to 1901, with a glossary of literary terms and guide to further reading.

In Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, Isobel Armstrong rescued Victorian poetry from its longstanding sepia image as ‘a moralised form of romantic verse' and unearthed its often subversive critique of nineteenth-century culture and politics. In this uniquely comprehensive and theoretically astute new edition, Armstrong provides an entirely new preface that notes the key advances in the criticism of Victorian poetry since her classic work was first published in 1993. A new chapter on the alternative fin de siècle sees Armstrong discuss Michael Field, Rudyard Kipling, Alice Meynell and a selection of Hardy lyrics. The extensive bibliography acts as a key resource for students and scholars alike.

This study considers why and how the heart became a vital image in Victorian poetry. It argues that the intense focus on heart imagery in the period highlights anxieties about the ability of poetry to act upon its readers. It covers key poems by authors such as Tennyson and the Brownings, and contextualizes them with reference to lesser-known works.

Victorian Poetry in Context offers a lively and accessible introduction to the diverse range of poetry written in the Victorian period. Considering such issues as reform and protest, gender, science and belief this book sets out the social and cultural contexts for the poetry of a fast-changing era. Sections on Victorian poetics, form and Victorian voices introduce the key literary contexts of poetry's production, and poetic innovations of the period such as the dramatic monologue are highlighted . At the heart of the book is a focus on the importance of attentive close reading, with original readings offered of well-known texts alongside those that have recently received renewed attention within scholarship. The book also offers an overview of critical approaches to several key texts and discussion of how Victorian poetry has remained influential in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Introducing texts, contexts and criticism, this is a lively and up-to-date resource for anyone studying Victorian poetry.

Nineteenth-century life and literature are full of strange accounts that describe the act of one person thinking about another as an ethically problematic, sometimes even a dangerously powerful thing to do. In this book, Adela Pinch explains why, when, and under what conditions it is possible, or desirable, to believe that thinking about another person could affect them. She explains why nineteenth-century British writers - poets, novelists, philosophers, psychologists, devotees of the occult - were both attracted to and repulsed by radical or substantial notions of purely mental relations between persons, and why they moralized about the practice of thinking about other people in interesting ways. Working at the intersection of literary studies and philosophy, this book both sheds new light on a neglected aspect of Victorian literature and thought, and explores the consequences of, and the value placed on, this strand of thinking about thinking.