丁尼生 tennyson.pptVIP

Charles Haiheng Ling, School of Foreign Studies, SCNU Victorian Poets Victorian Literature Chronologically the Victorian period roughly coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria over England from 1837 to 1901. Victorian poetry was published in periodicals and underwent its own dramatic changes during the era, with Victorian poets seeking to represent psychology in new ways. Fictionalized Past in Victorian Poetry The didactic vein pervading Victorian literature in an age of realism in fiction paradoxically makes Victorian poetry anything but realistic. This comes from its quality as public poetry in an age when the dominant ideology dictated a dogmatic教条 turning to the past for discovering spectacular models of public action and public feeling materialized as “commendable可贵的，值得赞美的, great literature”. In plainer terms, therefore, Victorian poetry, just like the Victorian essay, is obsessed by the great ideas of a fictionalized past, it functions as a popular encyclopedia or commentary to myth or folklore and it is, consequently, a fashionable manneristic 矫揉造作commentary to a variety of ideas. If it is lyrical, a Victorian poem is so in an oblique, indirect way. The dramatised poetic voice, poetry becomes ventriloquy腹语术, being voiced through a mask; Poetry amounts to allegory, voiced as fairytale or as medieval legend. A pattern of double obliqueness or difficulty underwrites any Victorian poem, whose sentiment hides behind two ”veils”: the historically remote one, classicist or medievalist, in Tennyson’s allegorical poetry and the, nowadays, remote veil of the intended Victorian lesson in spirituality. Victorian lyricism in general is steeped in 充满sadness and melancholy and seeks the weak consolations慰藉 of oblivion, more often than not lethal oblivion致命的遗忘. Orthodox Victorian poetry is, therefore, a kind of morbidly elegiac lyrical poetry, feeble脆弱, decadent颓废 and even – stuffy古板乏味. Victorian vs. Romantic The Victorian poet, just like the Romantic, moves bac