Overview

Demonstrates what Victorian poetry tells us about the relationship between poetry and time Brings together various aspects of Victorian poetry under one coherent perspective (changing concepts of time) Discusses a wide range of texts by well-known as well as less familiar Victorian poets Interrogates the historical basis of widely held theoretical assumptions (e.g. the opposition between metre and rhythm, the juxtaposition of temporal narrative and timeless lyric) Presents an analytical framework for the analysis of poetic time structures Combines historical analysis with a sustained focus on the role of aesthetic form Time and Timelessness in Victorian Poetry explores the question of poetry's relation to time and argues that this relation is historically contingent as the concept of time changes, so too do the shaping forms and definitions of poetry. Victorian literature provides a rich testing field for its hypothesis, since the nineteenth century saw momentous changes in the ways people thought about and experienced time. This book demonstrates that these changes were an important factor for some of the long-term developments in Victorian poetry, like its loss of cultural prestige, the popularity of mixed genres like the poetic sequence, the dramatic monologue and the verse novel, and the demise of metrical poetry as the norm. Moreover, the historical perspective offered questions some widely held assumptions, not only about poetry, but also about time itself. Thus, the theoretical relevance of this study extends well beyond its Victorian context.

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9781399511810

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"""How can an aesthetic form that claims to be timeless survive the rapidity of social and technological change driven by industrial capitalism? Irmtraud Huber's incisive study of poetic form, genres and metre gets to the heart of one of the key debates in literature: what is poetry for in the modern age? ?"" -John Holmes, University of Birmingham"

Author Information

Irmtraud Huber is Professor for English Literature at the University of Konstanz. She has also held positions at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit t Munich and the Universit t Bern. Before turning her research interest to the Victorians, she published two monographs on contemporary fiction, Present-tense Narration in Contemporary Fiction (2016) and Literature after Postmodernism (2014). For her work, she has received awards from the Deutscher Anglistenverband and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

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