Victorian poetry : Poetry, poetics, and politics / Isobel Armstrong

Two systems of concentric circles
Experiments of 1830 : Tennyson and the formation of subversive, conservative poetry
1832 : critique of the poetry of sensation
Experiments in the 1830s : Browning and the Benthamite formation
The politics of dramatic form
Individualism under pressure
The radical in crisis : Clough
The liberal in crisis : Arnold
A new radical aesthetic
the grotesque as cultural critique : Morris
Tennyson in the 1850s : new experiments in conservative poetry and the type
Browning in the 1850s and after : new experiments in radical poetry and the grotesque
' A music of thine own' : women's poetry
an expressive tradition
Swinburne : agonistic Republican
the poetry of sensation as democratic critique
Hopkins : agonistic reactionary
the grotesque as conservative form
Meredith and others : hard, gem-like dissidence
James Thomson : atheist, blasphemer and anarchist
the grotesque sublime
Alternative fins de siècles : Rudyard Kipling, Michael Field, Thomas Hardy, Alice Meynell

In Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, Isobel Armstrong rescues Victorian poetry from its longstanding sepia image as 'a moralised form of romantic verse', and unearths 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 and Vernon Lee, the late epics of Swinburne and Morris, as well as a selection of Hardy lyrics. The extensive bibliography acts as a key resource for student and scholars alike