Two conspicuous features of the radical transformation of literary studies over the past three decades have been the dominance of theory-based interpretative discourse and cultural studies contextualizations. Both have greatly energized literary studies - but they have done so at a cost. Kerry McSweeney critiques such readings of Romantic, Victorian, and 19th-century American poems. In What's the Import? he proposes and exemplifies an aesthetic or intrinsic critical model rooted in literary-historical contextualization that considers the determination of meanings to be only one of the...
Two conspicuous features of the radical transformation of literary studies over the past three decades have been the dominance of theory-based interpr...
The Victorian poetry of sexual love between men and women has not been as fully studied as other components of the imaginative literature of the period, and some of the attention it has received has been more concerned with the society and ideology of the age than with the poetry or the love. This study attempts an integrated account of the three elements, with particular emphasis on the close reading of poems. Chapters are devoted to the distinguishing features of Victorian love poetry; Browning’s dramatic lyrics; Tennyson’s Maud and the lyrics from Princess; women poets (Barrett...
The Victorian poetry of sexual love between men and women has not been as fully studied as other components of the imaginative literature of the perio...