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Victorian Poetry

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 )

“Victorian poetry” is a term that does not quite coincide with the reign of Queen Victoria—a reign that began with the death of her uncle, William IV, in 1837 and lasted until her own death some 63 years later on January 22, 1901. The great poets who wrote most or all of their work while she was queen (and later, starting in 1876, empress of India) include Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and A. E. Housman. Some of the poets we think of as major 20th-century figures began writing in the Victorian Age, most significantly, perhaps, William Butler Yeats, but also Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. The measure and historical importance of the Victorian period in literary history can be marked by the fact that William Wordsworth, who had seen the French Revolution, was still writing a decade after Victoria became queen, while Yeats (who would live until the eve of the Second World War) had already published some of his most important books before she died.

Mention of Yeats and Kipling in the same sentence suggests a different way of defining the Victorian era: Kipling feels Victorian in a way that Yeats does not, and this is because Kipling’s great poetry accepted as a fact of history Britain’s Victorian-style preeminence in the world, whereas Yeats joined with the moderns to see how all that was solid melted into the air—in particular the air of World War I (1914–18), which changed everything. As a cultural phenomenon, the Victorian era might be said to have come to an end in August 1914. Indeed, at the end of the era thus defined, some of the most significant late Victorian writers, such as Alice Meynell, began leading pacifist movements against the resurgent militarism and international violence that so characterized Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Violence on the mechanized and global scale of the 20th century was one of the results of the seismic scientific and technological shifts that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century and spread throughout Europe and North America. If we put the end of the Victorian era at the beginning of World War I, we can say that it begins a little before Victoria’s accession, with the sudden and earthshaking discoveries of Victorian science. Tennyson and Browning, the two greatest Victorian poets, both took an intense interest in the revolutionary scientific discoveries of the day. The central and most revolutionary achievement of Victorian science was Charles Darwin’s (1809–82) discovery of the mechanism of evolution, the “Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,” as the title page of the first edition of his book puts it. That book, generally known as On the Origin of the Species, appeared in 1859, the same year as Edward FitzGerald’s despairing celebration of the nothingness of human life in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, written partly in answer to Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. The first edition of In Memoriam had been completed 10 years earlier, so Darwin was not a shadow in Tennyson’s early world. But his gigantic shadow was, in fact, first cast by the discoveries and systematic exposition of Charles Lyell (1797–1875) in his Principles of Geology , published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833—the year that Arthur Henry Hallam (A.H.H.), Tennyson’s closest and most beloved friend, died at 22 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lyell was one of the first to have an inkling of what has come to be called “deep time,” the shocking, almost infinite antiquity of the world—an antiquity that suggested an equally shocking future stretching uniformly ahead forever. Since it was really only in the 18th century that astronomers began to be aware of the vastness of space (no one knew that other stars were also suns until then), the scientific revolution that began with the Enlightenment and accelerated throughout the Victorian era was one that severely undercut human belief in transcendentalist idealism. The universe suddenly appeared too big to transcend, and as Tennyson put it, the muse of astronomy, Urania, rebuked the muse of elegy and tragedy, Melpomene, who replied, “A touch of shame upon her cheek; / ‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak / Of thy prevailing mysteries’” ( f , section 37, ll. 10–12).

For Tennyson, the death of Hallam was a catastrophic experience of the overwhelming of the human soul by an indifferent universe. Romantic poetry (see romanticism) had found a way to idealize human subjectivity as against the trash of mere empirical externality, but the cascading discoveries of science represented a kind of revenge on the part of the material world. In theory—romantic theory—the mind could transcend any world, no matter how great, because the world’s greatness was only relative, and the mind traffics with absolutes (see, for example, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mont Blanc ). But for the Victorians, the discovery of unimagined abysses showed that the world far outvied the mind when it came to imagination—nature’s indifferent, inhuman imagination (personified in In Memoriam ) made little of anything the human mind could offer from its own petty resources. In Memoriam and many other great Victorian poems struggled against this apprehension, but the struggle shows few of the transcendent and absolute victories to be found in the greatest romantic poets. (Browning’s essay on Shelley explicitly contrasts the objectivity of contemporary poetry—an objectivity he also ascribes to William Shakespeare—to romantic subjectivity.)

Accordingly, it might be more correct to say that the Victorian era is the era of perhaps the greatest minor poetry ever written in English. “Minor poetry” is not meant as a belittling term: The Victorians wrote in an age when for the first time, perhaps, poets were realizing that with respect to the world around it, poetry could only be minor. Tennyson, again, imagining a critic of the intense grief he displays in In Memoriam , asks: “Is this an hour / For private sorrow’s barren song, / When more and more the people throng / The chairs and thrones of civil power? / A time to quicken and to swoon, / When Science reaches forth her arms / To feel from world to world and charms / Her secret from the latest moon?” (section 21, ll. 13–20). Indeed, many still complain that Victorian literature marked the beginning of a general phenomenon of escapism which in the 20th century would become transmogrified into incessant television watching. (Victorian critics lambasted the widespread reading of novels in ways that the stern moralists of the second half of the 20th century lambasted the widespread failure to read novels instead of watching TV. These are really the same complaint.)

All of this means that Victorian literature in general and poetry in particular aimed at giving its readers pleasure. The Victorians could no longer quite believe—as Wordsworth had in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)—that such pleasure could save the soul. The Victorians were the heirs of the romantics in many ways, not least in their sense that the pleasures of literature, difficult as they sometimes were, went as deep as the depth of the human soul. But for the Victorians, the human soul did not seem quite as deep as it did for their predecessors.

All of this is generalization, of course, but it is generalization that accounts for a range of Victorian reaction, from the insistence on the absolute accuracy to which human perception can attain, to be found in Arnold, to the counter-insistence on the primacy of subjective experience over any empirical accuracy, with which the essayist and critic Walter Horatio Pater countered Arnold, and which culminated in Wildean aestheticism. It also accounts for Yeats’s folkloric anachronizing on the one hand and the striking number of conversions to Catholicism, such as Hopkins’s, on the other, offering an account of the soul fiercely capable of the same minute severity as any faithchallenging science. Further, it accounts for the triumphal shrewdness of such a champion of ­English industrial and economic achievement as Kipling.

What these poets almost all share is a sense of poetry as giving pleasure. Once the burden is taken off literary pleasure as the royal road to transcendence, pleasure can be regarded as an end in itself, and the Victorians could write the kind of poetry that gave a purer pleasure than the strongly individualized poetic self-assertions to be found in the romantics. (John Keats is a partial exception and a high influence on the Victorians, especially on Tennyson.) If one thinks of the kind of poetry that we remember without remembering or caring who wrote it, then this is the kind of poetry that the Victorians wrote. This can be seen as much in the vogue for highly sophisticated dramatic monologues— as with Browning and Tennyson, who were inventing characters, not speaking for themselves—as in the nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. It is no accident that Francis Turner Palgrave’s great and wildly successful anthology Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics was a product of the Victorian age and ended with a few contemporary poems (Palgrave thanked Tennyson in his introduction), and that almost all its selections, from whatever age, sound Victorian.

The character of Palgrave’s collection culled from various poets can be found in the kinds of collections that individual Victorian poets put together, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Similarly, among Tennyson’s most popular works were songs from the longer narrative works, such as the songs from The Princess: A Medley, which themselves are contextless, songs sung by characters, not spoken by them. FitzGerald pointed out that the Rubáiyát was an anthology (published alphabetically in Persian), which he gave the form of an eclogue (pastoral poem)—so that even when placed into a consecutive form, it is the stanzas that had priority, not the story they told. Even Tennyson described In Memoriam as a collection of lyrics, not as a consecutive work (though it is that, too, of course). Swinburne was another impresario of the evocative (partly through his study of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience ), and Yeats consistently described his poems as songs.

Idiosyncratic and unpredictable as so many of the Victorians were, they nevertheless wrote poems that people remember as poems rather than as the expressions of poets. They wrote poems that gave people pleasure as poems, and such pleasure is the most archaic and deeply rooted experience of poetry that any of us ever has. Thus, Melpomene, the muse of tragedy shamed by Urania’s rebuke in In Memoriam states that as an earthly muse, she owns “but a little art / To lull with song an aching heart, / And render human love his dues,” so that in the end her role is to intensify human experience, minor as it is compared to the transcendence where science and religion come together in the grandeur and immensity of the universe. She, on the other hand, ministering to purely human and earthly experience, has “darken’d sanctities with song” (section 37, l. 24).

None of this should suggest that Victorian poetry is cloying. Its intensity of grief and its apprehensions of despair rival those of any other poetic tradition or period. In fact, some of that intensity derives from a paradoxical acknowledgement of its uselessness. The idea that the human soul is minor, just as the poetry that soul expresses is minor, is a grim one—consonant with the Victorian insights of that greatest of analytic pessimists, Sigmund Freud. The Pre-Raphaelite poetry can have the last word here: The absolutely minor pleasures of decorative beauty—scorned as unworthy of poetry by too many grander aspirants—became for them the devastatingly precise detail which undercuts any notion of transcendence. (They are the forebears of such modern great poets as Elizabeth Bishop.) All there is, in the end, is the world of detail, without the saving importance that might turn loss into gain, as it did for the romantics, that might make pleasure any more than decorative. It is the success of Victorian poetry that it preserves the importance of the decorative, gives us something to hang onto on earth when there is nothing that poetry can communicate that will bring us into heaven.

Bibliography Browning, Robert. Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Reeves and Turner. 1888. Hough, Graham Goulden. The Last Romantics. London: Duckworth, 1949. Houghton, Walter Edwards. Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830– 1870. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957. Trilling, Lionel, and Harold Bloom. Victorian Prose and Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Ricks, Christopher, ed. The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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Victorian Poetry in English Literature: Characteristics & Themes

Back to: History of English Literature All Ages – Summary & Notes

Table of Contents

Introduction

Victorian poetry refers to the verses composed during the reign of Queen Victoria in English (1837-1901). This period was marked by tremendous cultural upheaval.

There were a drastic change and development in the form of literature, art and music. Although Victorian Poetry was quite different from that of the preceding era , yet there were some similarities that existed between the two periods.

• Questioning the Established Rule of Church
• Interest in myths and mysteries.
• Scepticism and Doubtfulness.

Characteristics

The Victorian Poetry was quite realistic in nature and quite less idealised as compared to the Romanic Poets who were idealists and believed in Art for the Art Sake . Nature, that was everything for the Romantics lost that idealised position in the Victorian era and became just a source of leisure and inspiration for the poets.

Focus on Masses

Romantic Poetry mainly focused on rural and rustic life. It is no way related to city life. On the other hand, Victorian poets used language as well as themes common to city life and thus wrote about the masses and for the masses.

As already discussed, Victorians were quite realistic and thus were more concerned about the reality rather than the ideal world. Due to the industrial revolution and advancement in science and technology, there was a drastic increase in the city population that gave rise to slums, poverty, unemployment, corruption diseases, deaths etc.

Thus, Victorian Poetry which focused on the pains and sufferings of commoners had a note of pessimism.

Science and Technology

The advancement in science and inventions was welcomed by the Victorian poets. It made them believe that a man can find all solutions to his problems and sufferings. They made their readers believe that they should use science for their betterment.

Questioning to God

It was an important feature of Victorian poetry. The development of empirical science, rationalism and radicalism led the people to give up religious thoughts and be more sceptic. Moreover, corruption in the Church, defining the morality of Priests, etc also led the people to question the religious institutions.

Sense of Responsibility

The Romantics believed in “return in nature”. A number of the Romantics did not like the city life and instead of giving voice to the victims of industrialisation, they left the city life. On the other hand, Victoria poets took the responsibility of social reform and gave voice to the commoners by living with them.

Though morality saw a steep decline in the Victorian Era , a number of poets tried to retain it by encouraging the people to be honest and noble.

Interest in Medieval Myths & Folklore

The Victorians showed great favour towards Medieval Literature. They loved mythical and chivalrous anecdotes of Medieval Knights, Courtly Love etc. This interest is on contrary to the of Romantics as the latter loved classical myths and legends.

Use of Sensory Devices & Imagery

The poets of the preceding era used imagery vividly. However, the Victorians also used sensory devices to describe the abstract scenes of chaos between Religion and Science.

Sentimentality

The Victorians wrote about artistic creations thus giving way to deeper imaginations.

A number of poets wrote humorous and whimsical verses. e.g. Bad Ballads.

Dramatic Monologue

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Victorian Age in English Literature

The Victorian Age, which derives its name from the reign of Queen Victoria spanning from 1837 to 1901, marked a profound shift in English literature and culture. The emphasis on emotion and imagination of the Romantic era gave way to a new emphasis on social realism, industrialization, and the intricacies of a quickly changing society during this time. With its innovations in technology and urbanization, the Industrial Revolution significantly influenced the Victorian era.

Victorian authors and thinkers were compelled to address the moral, social, and political issues of the day as the world experienced significant change. Thus, the Victorian Age is remembered as a multifaceted age that examined the conflicts between tradition and progress, religion and doubt, and social fairness and inequity, all of which had a lasting influence on English literature and culture.

Table of Contents

Cultural and Historical Background

The Victorian Age was profoundly shaped by its cultural and historical background, which was characterized by several key factors.

It was important to consider the effects of the Industrial Revolution. The effects of the Industrial Revolution were significant. The rapid mechanization of industry and the transition from rural to industrial economies changed the British landscape. This upheaval had a significant impact on the social structure, the nature of labor, and people’s living arrangements, resulting in both economic prosperity and stark inequality.

Read More: Romantic Age in English Literature

Significant social and economic changes occurred, including urbanization. Cities expanded at a rate never before seen, drawing people from the countryside to cities in search of work. New problems with overcrowding, sanitation, the expansion of slums, and the rise of a growing middle class were brought on by this urbanization.

The development of technology and the spread of literacy were key features of this time period. Transportation and communication were completely transformed by innovations like the steam engine and the expansion of the railroads. A culture of reading and intellectual discourse was also fostered by the abundance of newspapers, periodicals, and books that came about as a result of rising literacy rates.

The morality and values of the Victorian era played a significant role as well. A strong sense of decorum, responsibility, and respectability pervaded this time period, which was characterized by Queen Victoria’s personal reputation for having stringent moral standards. These moral principles influenced Victorian literature and social norms.

Literature of the Victorian Age

In contrast to the Romantic era ‘s predominantly lyrical focus, novels rose to prominence during the Victorian age and became the dominating literary form. This change reflected the time’s focus on social realism and examination of the intricacies of the human condition.

Famous novelists who wrote novels during the Victorian era included Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens . Dickens wrote novels like “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations,” which shed light on the harsh realities of urban life and the problems of the working class. Dickens is renowned for his vivid characters and societal satire.

Read More: Charles Dickens as a victorian poet

With her novel “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Bronte provided a comprehensive exploration of love, class, and female freedom by delving into the emotional and psychological depths of her characters, particularly the female protagonist.

In contrast, Thomas Hardy focused on the rural setting and the misfortune of people entangled in the web of fate and circumstance in works like “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “Far from the Madding Crowd.” The conflicts between tradition and modernity were frequently portrayed in his novels.

Poetry and Romantic Revival

While novels became more popular during the Victorian era, poetry remained an important and significant component of the literary landscape. The Romantic Revival, which saw writers return to earlier Romantic themes of nature, spirituality, and social critique, was an important feature of Victorian poetry.

Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning, two well-known poets of the time, are prime examples of the Romantic Revival in their works. Nature served as a frequent source of inspiration for Tennyson’s poetry, and his collection “In Memoriam” examined topics such as loss, faith, and the human condition. His poem “The Lady of Shalott” is a wonderful illustration of how Victorian poetry combines nature with spirituality.

Robert Browning, who is known for his dramatic monologues, explored the complicated moral and psychological motivations of his characters. In order to examine themes of justice and human nature, his poem “The Ring and the Book” mixes together several perspectives.

Along with these poets, the Romantic Revival had a significant impact on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , a group of artists and poets that emerged during the Victorian era. With the help of sophisticated visual art, poets like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, among others, explored themes of beauty, sensuality, and spirituality.

Read More: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Social and Political Essays

The Victorian Era saw a flourishing of social and political essays in addition to the predominance of novels and the resurgence of Romantic themes in poetry. These essays served as a platform for the discussion of important problems pertaining to class, gender, and imperialism, which reflects the period’s intense involvement with important societal issues.

Read More: Romanticism in English Literature

During the Victorian era, authors like John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle significantly influenced the field of social and political essays. Philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill wrote notable works like “On Liberty” and “The Subjection of Women.” He defended individual freedom and promoted gender equality in these essays, pushing society to acknowledge the inherent rights and abilities of all people, regardless of gender.

On the other hand, Thomas Carlyle explored issues related to socioeconomic class and the effects of industrialization. While “Past and Present” offered a critical analysis of the effects of rapid societal change, “Chartism” addressed the frustrations of the working class and their aspirations for political reform.

These individuals were not the only ones who wrote and thought critically about social and political concerns throughout the Victorian era; there were many other authors and philosophers as well. These essays served as a platform for discussions among intellectuals and the development of concepts that would later influence the social and political atmosphere in Britain and beyond.

They contributed significantly to promoting change and bringing attention to pressing societal issues, leaving a lasting legacy in the fields of politics, literature, and social reform.

Key Themes and Characteristics

The Victorian era’s dedication to social realism and critique was a major theme and defining feature of the period. Victorian authors were deeply concerned about the social inequalities and disparities between classes that were prevalent in their rapidly evolving society. The commitment was shown in the meticulous analysis of the lives of everyday people and the portrayal of daily life.

Charles Dickens, a writer best known for his works “Oliver Twist” and “Hard Times,” applied his creative talent to demonstrate the difficult circumstances that the working class had to endure. They revealed the dark side of industrialisation, child labour, and poverty through compelling narratives and characters. Dickens, in particular, rose to prominence as a champion of social change, using his fiction to promote reform and draw attention to the condition of the oppressed.

Along with Dickens, other Victorian novelists like Thomas Hardy and Elizabeth Gaskell also practiced social realism by highlighting the difficulties and ambitions of common people. While Hardy’s writings, such as “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” explored the difficulties of rural life and the injustices experienced by women, Gaskell’s “North and South” highlighted the conflict between industrial capitalism and workers’ rights.

Exploration of Gender and Feminism

Women’s rights and their position in society were extensively explored throughout the Victorian era, reflecting the changing sentiments of the time. Victorian literature played a pivotal role in both examining women’s responsibilities and promoting more gender equality.

Authors who identified as feminists, such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot, made significant contributions to this discourse. Poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, notably “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and the epic poem “Aurora Leigh,” dealt with issues of love, identity, and the fight for women’s independence. Her works were distinguished by a progressive attitude on gender equality and women’s freedom of expression.

In general, the emotional lives and problems of female characters were given more attention in Victorian literature. Novels like George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” provided complex depictions of women’s experiences, aspirations, and societal limitations.

Moral and Ethical Inquiry

The Victorian era was characterized by a profound and constant involvement with moral and ethical inquiry in its literature, which reflected the era’s intense reflection on moral conundrums and theological issues. This introspection was influenced by Religious uncertainty and the significant scientific advancements.

Victorian authors grappled with moral dilemmas that were frequently created in the context of rapidly changing social, scientific, and religious atmosphere. For instance, the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin led to serious concerns regarding humanity’s moral obligations and place in the natural world. His book, “On the Origin of Species,” profoundly influenced Victorian thought and disrupted established theological conceptions of creation.

Novels like “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure,” written by authors like Thomas Hardy, examined themes of fate, destiny, and moral judgment. These works highlighted morally conflicted protagonists within an indifferent or even hostile setting.

Literature from the Victorian era also reflects a rise in religious skepticism and doubt. Writers like Matthew Arnold portrayed a sense of spiritual crisis and the eroding of established religious certainties in his poem “Dover Beach.” Victorian literature was known for its contemplative, frequently depressing exploration of faith and ethics.

Notable Figures of the Victorian Age

The Victorian Age was teeming with notable figures who left an indelible mark on English literature and culture, reflecting the spirit and ethos of the era.

Charles Dickens was a prolific novelist and social critic who is regarded as one of the most well-known individuals of the Victorian era. His works, including “Oliver Twist,” “Great Expectations,” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” not only pleased readers with their endearing characters and compelling stories, but also provided insight into the glaring social inequalities and class divisions that characterized Victorian society. Dickens was an advocate of social change, and his writings significantly contributed to increasing public awareness of these issues.

Read More: A Tale of Two Cities as a historical novel

Another notable figure from the Victorian era is Charlotte Bronte, the author of the well-known novel “Jane Eyre.” Her work, which is known for its examination of love, class, and female freedom, is still regarded as a timeless masterpiece. Bront’s portrayal of the bold heroine and her daring story choices subverted the expectations of her period and had a long-lasting influence on feminist literature.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, referred to as the “Poet Laureate of the Victorian Age,” was celebrated for his excellent poetry. His poems, including “The Lady of Shalott,” “In Memoriam,” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” perfectly captured the Victorian preference for romanticism and reflection on the natural world and human emotion. Tennyson’s poems did a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of the age.

The Victorian Age was significantly shaped by Queen Victoria herself. Her nearly seven-decade rule, which was the longest in British history up to that moment, had a significant impact on the culture’s ideals and sensibility. Her dedication to moral principles and family life set the standard for Victorian culture and society. Her status as a patron of the arts and sciences also contributed to the intellectual vitality of the time.

Conclusion:

In the history of English literature and culture, the Victorian era is recognized as a crucial and transformative time. It was distinguished by a diverse range of literary accomplishments, social consciousness, and in-depth moral and ethical inquiry. The Victorian era is still a testament to how writing has the ability to reflect, criticize, and inspire change because of its wide literary output and deep engagement with the opportunities and challenges of the time. It established the foundation for modern literature and culture, making it a period of permanent significance in the history of English literature.

• Critical Appreciation of Tennyson’s “Break, Break Break”
• Tennyson as a representative poet of Victorian age
• Short note on elegy
• Justify the title Pride and Prejudice
• The use of irony in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

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7.1: The Victorian Era (1832–1901)

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Learning Objectives

• Recognize and evaluate the influence that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert exerted on the last half of the 19th century.
• Identify and explain the conflicts that defined the Victorian Era.
• Assess the ways in which these conflicts influenced Victorian literature.
• List, define, and give examples of typical forms of Victorian literature.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The Victorian Age—the era when the sun never set on the British Empire, a time when the upper classes of Britain felt their society was the epitome of prosperity, progress, and virtue—Dickens’s words, however, could apply to his own Victorian age as well as they apply to the French Revolution setting of his novel. The Victorian Era was a time of contrasts—poverty as well as prosperity, degrading manual labor as well as technological progress, and depravity as well as virtue.

Snow Hill, Holburn, London (Anonymous).

Queen Victoria

The last seventy years of the 19th century were named for the long-reigning  Queen Victoria . The beginning of the Victorian Era may be rounded off to 1830 although many scholars mark the beginning from the passage of the first  Reform Bill  in 1832 or Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837.

Victoria was only eighteen when her uncle William IV died and, having no surviving legitimate children, left the crown to his niece.

Victoria receives the news that she is Queen. Engraved by Emery Walker (1851–1933), from the picture by Henry Tanworth Wells (1828–1903) at Buckingham Palace.

Although by the 19th century Britain was a constitutional monarchy and the queen held little governing power, Victoria set the moral and political tone of her century. She became a symbol of decency, decorum, and duty.

Three years into her reign, Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a region in what is now Germany.  Prince Albert  (given the title “Prince” by Victoria), although he had no actual power in the government, became one of Victoria’s chief advisors and a proponent of technological development in Britain. Together the couple had nine children who married into many of Europe’s royal and noble families. Victoria and Albert were considered the model of morality and respectable family life.

Balmoral Castle, the royal residence in Scotland.

Osborne House, the royal residence on the Isle of Wight.

When Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria retired from public view, spending time in her Balmoral Castle in Scotland or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Public opinion of the queen waned as years passed without her resuming her official duties. Even when she conceded to her advisors’ urging to return to London and to honor her public obligations, she continued to wear mourning until her own death. She also commissioned many public memorials to Prince Albert, including the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (near the original location of the Crystal Palace), Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, London.

Royal Albert Hall, London.

The ornamental dome on the Victoria & Albert Museum was modeled after Queen Victoria’s favorite crown, visible in the portrait below, now on display with the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

Photograph by Alexander Bassano 1829–1913.

Queen Victoria reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India until her death in 1901.

Victorian Conflicts

The Victorian Era was, in many ways, paradoxically “the best times” and “the worst of times.”

Conflicts of Morality

Queen Victoria embodied ideals of virtue, modesty, and honor. In fact, the term  Victorian  has in the past been almost a synonym for prim, prudish behavior. At the same time, London and other British cities had countless gaming halls which provided venues not just for gambling but also  opium dens  and  prostitution . With the influx of population into the cities, desperate working class women turned to prostitution in attempts to support themselves and their children. Historian Judity Walkowitz reports that 19th century cities had 1 prostitute for every 12 adult males ( quoted in “The Great Social Evil”: Victorian Prostitution  by Prof. Christine Roth). Because of rampant sexually transmitted diseases among the British military, Parliament passed a series of  Contagious Diseases Acts  in the 1860s. These acts allowed police to detain any woman suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease and to force her to submit to exams that were considered humiliating for women at that time. Police needed little basis for such suspicions, often simply that a woman was poor.

Thomas Hardy’s poem “ The Ruined Maid ” reveals one reason many women turned to prostitution ( ruined  is a Victorian euphemism for an unmarried woman who has lost her virginity): in the poem, two young women converse. One woman, Melia, has left the farm to become a prostitute. When she meets a former friend, the contrast between the two women is pronounced: Melia is wearing fine clothes and is well fed and well cared for. The virtuous young woman, doing honest work on the farm, is wearing rags, digging potatoes by hand for subsistence, and suffering poor health. Hardy forces his readers to question what kind of society would reward prostitution while leaving the virtuous woman in abject poverty.

Conflicts of Technology and Industry

As an advocate of Victorian progress in science and industry,  Prince Albert commissioned the Great Exhibition of 1851 , a type of world’s fair where all the countries in the British Empire had displays and Britain could show off its prosperity to the rest of the world. Albert had the  Crystal Palace , a huge, modern building of glass and iron, built in Hyde Park to house the exhibition. After the  Great Exhibition  ended, the building was dismantled and moved and in its new location was destroyed by fire in 1936.

Video Clip 1

The Albert Memorial Symbol of the Victorian Age

(click to see video)

View a video lecture about the Albert Memorial.

The Albert Memorial commemorated all the same things the Great Exhibition vaunted. The four arms extending from the main statue represent four continents on which the British Empire had holdings: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas—the sun literally never set on the British Empire. The figures on the frieze are great painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, and architects, representatives of the world’s accomplishments which culminated in the British Victorian culture. The mosaics on the canopy represent manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, and engineering—the foundations of British prosperity. And, of course, in the center, is the gilded figure of Albert himself.

Arm representing Africa.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 held in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London. Source: Exterior: from Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 1854 interior: William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851, V&A.

Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 focused attention on the technological advances made during the Industrial Revolution. Although achievements such as the building of the railroad system and the implementation of mechanized factories produced great prosperity for some,  others suffered . Even before the Victorian Era, writers drew attention to these problems. Wordsworth’s “Michael,” for example, portrays a man whose family had made their living from their land for many generations. With the advent of machines to weave woolen cloth, their livelihood, their way of life, was lost. Blake’s “Chimney Sweeper” poems illustrate how  children suffered  in the industrial age.

A girl pulling a coal tub in a mine. Source: Parliamentary Papers 1842.

In addition, working conditions in factories were deplorable. With no safety regulations and no laws limiting either the number of hours people could be required to work or the age of factory workers, some factory owners were willing to sacrifice the well-being of their employees for greater profit. Children as young as five worked in factories and mines. Shelley’s “Men of England” and Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” are two examples of poems written specifically to address these problems.

The  1833 Factory Act  outlawed the employment of people under age eighteen at night, from 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. and limited the number of hours those under eighteen could work to twelve hours a day. For the first time, textile factory owners were forbidden to employ children under the age of nine. Children under age eleven could not work more than nine hours a day. The 1833 Factory Act also stipulated that children working in factories attend some type of school.

The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited females and boys under ten from working below ground in mines.

While these provisions hardly seem protective according to modern standards, the resulting conditions greatly improved  life for many children . Throughout Victoria’s reign, other parliamentary acts continued to alleviate working conditions in the ever-expanding Victorian industrial age.

Conflicts of Faith and Doubt

The scientific and technological advances celebrated at the Great Exhibition of 1851 led to another crisis in Victorian England: a crisis of faith and doubt. During the earlier part of the 19th century, the work of Charles Lyell and other geologists with their discoveries of fossilized remains of animals never seen before led to debates among scientists about the origins of these creatures. Debates about the age of the earth for some called into question the Genesis account of creation. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his  On the Origin of Species . Lyell and Darwin were among many who contributed to scientific theories that some saw as contradictory to established religious beliefs.

These scientific issues together with apparent lack of concern for appalling human conditions among the lower classes led some to doubt the presence of a divine being in the world and others to question the value of Christianity. Literature by writers such as Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold questions the presence of  religious faith  in the world.

At the same time, a conviction that Britain had a duty to spread Christianity around the world became one reason, or to some an excuse, for British imperialism.

Conflicts over Imperialism

A desire to expand industrial wealth and to have access to inexpensive raw materials led to the British occupation of countries around the globe. Although the United States and other European countries participated in this type of  imperialism , the  British Empire  was the largest and wealthiest of its time.

Along with their desire for material gain, many British saw the expansion of the British Empire as what  Rudyard Kipling referred to as “the white man’s burden,”  the responsibility of the British to bring their civilization and their way of life to what many considered inferior cultures. The result of this type of reasoning was often the destruction of local cultures and the oppression of local populations. In addition, a religious zeal to bring British religion to “heathen” peoples resulted in an influx of missionaries with the colonialists.

A backlash of protest against the concept of imperialism further divided a British nation already divided by class, religion, education, and wealth. While many British citizens sincerely desired to share their knowledge and beliefs with less developed nations, others found the movement a convenient excuse to expand their country’s, and their own, power and wealth.

Conflicts over Women’s Rights

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.” Queen Victoria, 1870

quoted in Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria)

Ironically, as seen in this passage from a letter written in the royal third person by Queen Victoria, even the Queen opposed women’s rights. Nonetheless, the Victorian Era did see advancement in women’s political rights. The Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870 gave married women the right to own property they earned or acquired by inheritance. The upper classes were, of course, primarily concerned with inheritances. Before the passage of this act, money or property left to a married woman immediately belonged to her husband. By the late 19th century, women had some rights to their children and the right to leave their husbands because of physical abuse.

Education for women also improved. The idea Mary Wollstonecraft expressed in her “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792 very gradually, over more than 100 years, became a reality.

The first schools for the lower classes, girls or boys, were Sunday schools organized by churches to teach children basic literacy as well as religious lessons on the only day they were not working full time. Not until the  Education Act of 1870  were public schools in all areas of the country provided by law. Even then, attendance was not made compulsory for another ten years and then only for children aged five to ten.

Girls from the lower classes were included in the first public schools; however, girls from the upper classes continued to receive their basic education primarily in the home and in finishing schools for young ladies.  Cambridge University  and  Oxford University  established the first colleges for women in the latter half of the 19th century. Women were not allowed to attend the existing colleges for men and were not considered full members of the universities until the 20th century.

Although there was an active  woman’s suffrage  movement during the Victorian Era, women did not receive the right to vote until the 20th century.

Take the  Women’s Rights Quiz  on the BBC website to see how much you know about the rights of Victorian women.

The major change in the  English language during the 19th century  was the introduction of vocabulary to communicate new innovations, inventions, and concepts that resulted from the Industrial Age. Language mirrored class distinctions in both vocabulary and accents. The well educated upper classes were distinguished by their speech. Slang and an entirely differently accented English were the marks of the lower classes.

Forms of Literature

As noted in the Romantic Period introduction, a  novel , as defined in the Holman/Harmon  Handbook to Literature , is an “extended fictional prose narrative.” The  novel  was a dominant form in the Victorian Era. Many Victorian novelists—Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Wilke Collins, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson—wrote  serial novels , novels published in installments over a period of time.  Serial novels  appeared in newspapers or magazines or could be published in independently printed booklets. As larger portions of the population became literate, demand for reading material grew. The  inexpensive booklets , each containing a chapter or other small portion of a novel, were affordable entertainment for the middle classes.

As in the Romantic Period, lyric poetry was popular in the Victorian Era. In addition to the lyric, the  verse novel , a  long narrative poem , such as Barrett Browning’s  Aurora Leigh , Tennyson’s  Idylls of the King , and Browning’s  The Ring and the Book , also was a prevalent form. Browning popularized the  dramatic monologue , a form of poetry which presents a speaker in a dramatic situation.

Non-Fiction Prose

The many conflicts of the Victorian Era provided fertile subject matter for non-fiction prose writers such as  Matthew Arnold ,  Thomas Carlyle ,  John Stuart Mill ,  John Henry Newman ,  Walter Pater , and  John Ruskin .

Popular forms of entertainment  such as the  music hall  and melodramas flourished during the Victorian Era as entertainment became divided along class lines. Popular music and musical plays, separated from legitimate theater in their own venues, provided leisure-time amusement for the middle classes. Robert Browning wrote  closet dramas , plays not actually intended for the stage.  Oscar Wilde  revived the comedy of manners with plays such as  Lady Windermere’s Fan  and  The Importance of Being Earnest .

Key Takeaways

• Although Queen Victoria symbolized decency, decorum, and duty, Victorian society spanned a wide spectrum of prosperity and poverty, education and ignorance, progress and regression
• Victorian society wrestled with conflicts of morality, technology and industry, faith and doubt, imperialism, and rights of women and ethnic minorities.
• Many Victorian writers addressed both sides of these conflicts in many forms of literature.
• Typical forms of Victorian literature include novels, serialized novels, lyric poetry, verse novels, dramatic monologues, non-fiction prose, and drama.

Victorianism

• “ All Change in the Victorian Age .” Bruce Robinson. Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Victorians. BBC History.
• “ Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London .” Michael Levenson, University of Virginia; David Trotter, University College London; Anthony Wohl, Vassar College. Institute for Advance Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia; Department of English University College London; Cambridge University Press.
• “ Movements and Currents in Nineteenth-Century British Thought .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Overview of the Victorian Era .”  History in Focus . Anne Shepherd. University of London.
• “ Victorian and Victorianism .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Victorian Britain .” History Trails. BBC.
• “ Victorian England: An Introduction .” Christine Roth, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
• “ The Victorian Period .” Dr. Robert M. Kirschen, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
• “ Victorians 1837–1901 .” Liza Picard. The British Library.
• “ Victorians 1850–1901 .”  The National Archives .
• “ Queen Victoria .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ Addiction in the Nineteenth Century .” Dr. Susan Zieger, Stanford University.
• “ The Contagious Diseases Act .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ The Great Social Evil”: Victorian Prostitution . Prof. Christine Roth, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
• “ Opium Dens and Opium Usage in Victorian England .”  Victorian History . Bruce Rosen, University of Tasmania.
• “ 1832 Reform Act .” Taking Liberties: The Struggle for Britain’s Freedoms and Rights. The British Library.
• “ The 1833 Factory Act [from Statutes of the Realm, 3 & 4 William IV, c. 103] .”  The Victorian Web . Dr. Marjie Bloy, National University of Singapore.
• “ 19th Century Poor Law Union and Workhouse Records .”  The National Archives . brief explanation of 1834 Poor Law and images.
• “ Child Labor .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ Corn Laws .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ The Crystal Palace Animation .” The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. University of Virginia.
• “ The Crystal Palace, or The Great Exhibition of 1851: An Overview .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ Great Exhibition .” Treasures.  The National Archives .
• “ The Great Exhibition .” History, Periods & Styles Features. The Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace .”  Victoria Station .
• “ The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England .”  The Victorian Web . Laura Del Col, West Virginia University.
• “ The Reform Acts .”  The Victorian Web . Glenn Everett, University of Tennessee at Martin.
• “ Testimony Gathered by Ashley’s Mines Commission .”  The Victorian Web . Laura Del Col, West Virginia University.
• “ Victorian Science & Religion .”  The Victorian Web . Aileen Fyfe, National University of Ireland Galway and John van Wyhe, Cambridge University.

Conflict over Imperialism

• “ The British Empire .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ British Empire .”  The National Archives .
• “ Kipling’s Imperialism .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ The 1870 Education Act .” Living Heritage: Going to School.  www.parliament.uk .
• “ Gender Ideology & Separate Spheres .” Gender, Health, Medicine & Sexuality in Victorian England. Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ Gender Matters .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies .”  The Victorian Web . Helena Wojtczak.
• “‘ The Personal is Political’: Gender in Private & Public Life .” Gender, Health, Medicine & Sexuality in Victorian England. Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ The Suffragettes in Parliament .” History of Parliament Podcasts.  www.parliament.uk .
• “ Suffragists .” Learning: Dreamers and Dissenters. The British Library.
• “ Victorian Britain: A Divided Nation ?” Education.  The National Archives .
• “ Women’s Status in Mid 19th-Century England: A Brief Overview .” Helena Wojtczak. Hastings Press.
• “ Women’s Rights Quiz .” Major Events of Victoria’s Reign. Victorians. BBC History.
• “ Women’s Work .” Prof. Pat Hudson, Cardiff University. Daily Life in Victorian Britain. Victorians. BBC History.

Victorian Language

• “ The Development of the English Language Following the Industrial Revolution .”  The Victorian Web . Jessica Courtney, University of Brighton (UK).
• “ The 19th Century Novel .”  Novels . Dr. Agatha Taormina, Extended Learning Institute of Northern Virginia Community College.
• “ Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Difficulties of Victorian Poetry .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Justifying God’s Ways to Man (and Woman): The Victorian Long Poem .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow. Brown University.
• “ Literary Genre, Mode, and Style .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ Nineteenth Century Drama .”  Theatre Database .
• “ Progress of Journalism in the Victorian Era .”  Bartleby.com . The Growth of Journalism. rpt. from  The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes  (1907–21). Vol. XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
• “ Serial Publication .” Prof. Joel J. Brattin, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Dickens. Life and Career.  PBS.org .
• Some Questions to Use in Analyzing Novels . Prof. Stephen C. Behrendt, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
• “ Studies of Victorian Literature .” Dr. John P. Farrell, University of Texas at Austin.
• “ Victorian Literature and Culture .” Prof. James Buzard.  MIT Open Courseware .
• “ Victorian Serial Novels .” Digital Collections. University of Victoria Libraries.
• “ Victorian Women Writers Project .” University of Indiana Digital Library Project.
• “ Why Read the Serial Versions of Victorian Novels? ”  The Victorian Web . Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University.
• “ The Albert Memorial: Symbol of the Victorian Age .” Dr. Carol Lowe, McLennan Community College.
• “ The Great Exhibition .” Victorians. The British Library.
• “ The Rise of Technology and Industry .” Learning: Victorians. The British Library. images, slide shows, video, podcasts featuring all types of industry and technological advances in daily life, such as cooking and bathrooms.
• “ A Visitor’s Guide to the Great Exhibition, from ‘The Illustrated Exhibitor .’” The Great Exhibition. Victorians. The British Library.

• Wed. Jun 5th, 2024

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Write short notes on Victorian poetry : Essay Summary (PDF)

Victorian poetry .

Victorian poetry victorian poetry pdf

Ans.  Victorian poetry contributed a lot to the development of English poetry.  It started in the second quarter of the 19th century (1832) and ended by 1901.  The poets of this period were close to life, surrounding and situations. Victorian poetry

Victorian poetry pdf

Read more from 1st Year (click)

ELord Alfred Tennyson was the most representative poet of the victorian age.  His poetry was a record of the intellectual and spiritual life of the time.  Being a careful observer of science and philosophy, he was deeply impressed by the discoveries and speculations there lies the conflict between science and religion, doubt and faith, materialism and spirituality in his poetry.

In Memoriam ‘we find a great conflict between faith and doubt Tennyson was essentially the poet of law and order as well as of progress.  The worrying stanzas of In Memoriam ‘are interesting and full of imagination.  Tennyson was an extremely emotional poet and was a great admirer of the English tradition.

  Among other important poems of Tennyson are, The Princess ‘,’ Tears Idle tears.  The Gardener ‘s Daughter, Bugle song’, ‘Sweet and Low’, ‘English Idylls,’ ‘Dora’, ‘Ulysses’, ‘Locksley Hall’, ‘Sir Galahad’, ‘The Brook’, ‘ The Charge of the Light Brigade ‘, ” Wages ‘ and ‘ The Higher pantheism and others.

Robert Brewing was also a leading poet of his age. He believed in the individual will and subordination. There is robust idealism reflected in his poetry, His boundless energy, his cheerful! courage, his faith in life and the development give a strange vitality of his poetry.

Victorian age of poetry

He had a firm belief in the immortality of the soul which formed the basis of his generous optimism Among his important poems, ‘ Dramatic Lyrics ‘, ‘ DramaticRomances and Lyrics ‘, ‘ Man and woman ‘, ‘ Pippa passes ‘, ‘ My Star ‘, ‘ Home Thoughts from Abroad ‘, ” Meeting at Night ‘, ‘ By the Fireside ‘, ‘ Pied pipes ‘, ‘ The Ring and the Book ”  are of high orders.

Victorian poetry characteristics

MathewAmold was also a great poet of the period. He was a true observer of mankind and he reached the ornate style. Most of his poems give expression to the conflict of the age between spontaneity and discipline. emotion and reason, faith and skepticism. As a matter of fact. Arnold longed for primitive faith, wholeness, simplicity, and happiness.

Even in his nature poems, he looks upon nature as a comic force. In his most famous poems. ‘ Empedocles on Etna ‘. Arnold deals with the life of a philosopher. Elizabeth Barret Browing was a leading poet of her period and her poetry reflects the social and political problems of the early victorian ora.

Victorian poetry notes

Among her important poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese and Casaguidi windows, ‘ are of a high order. Edward Fitzgerald was leading poet of the period, Among his important poetic creations, ‘ Rubaiyat of Oman Khayyam ‘ was of a high order. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also a famous poet of this period: Among his important poems, ‘ Ballads and Sonnets ‘ is of high understanding.

William Morris was also a great poet during the Victorian age. Among his important poems. ‘ Badlands and sonnets ‘ is of high importance. Swinburne . was the last poet of the period who expressed the thoughts and ideology of his time.

Victorian poetry is were rich in expressing moral purpose idealism and the great philosophy of its time. Victorian poetry

Write short note on Victorian poetry 

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2023 Poet Laureate Fellows Essays & Interviews

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In 2023, the Academy of American Poets awarded a combined total of $1.1 million to its 2023  Poet Laureate Fellows . These funds supported their respective public poetry programs throughout the year as presented in their proposals to the Academy. The fellowship program is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they serve are:  Diannely Antigua  (Portsmouth, NH);  Lisa Bickmore  (Utah);  Jennifer Bartell Boykin  (Columbia, SC);  Joseph Bruchac  (Saratoga Springs, NY); Lauren Camp  (New Mexico);  Laura Da’  (Redmond, WA);  Oliver de la Paz  (Worcester, MA);  Farnaz Fatemi  (Santa Cruz County, CA);  Nicholas Gulig  (Fort Atkinson, WI);  Peter J. Harris  and  Carla Rachel Sameth (Altadena, CA);  Taylor Johnson  (Takoma Park, MD);  Yalie Saweda Kamara  (Cincinnati, OH);  Brandy Nālani McDougall (Hawaiʻi);  Gloria Muñoz  (St. Petersburg, FL);  Sharon Kennedy-Nolle  (Sullivan County, NY); Shin Yu Pai  (Seattle, WA);  Willie Perdomo  (New York);  Jason Magabo Perez  (San Diego, CA);  Glenis Redmond  (Greenville, SC);  Erin Elizabeth Smith  (Oak Ridge, TN);  Junious Ward  (Charlotte, NC); and  Joaquín Zihuatanejo  (Dallas, TX).

Learn more about the 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows, their communities, fellowship projects, writing practices, and thoughts on poetry, by reading these interviews and essays from their fellowship year. 

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Lisa Bickmore

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Jennifer Bartell Boykin

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Joseph Bruchac

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Lauren Camp

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Laura Da’

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Oliver de la Paz

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Farnaz Fatemi

On Poetry and Community: Nicholas Gulig

At the age of forty-three, in what is, I hope, the middle of my life, I became the tenth poet laureate of the s

On Poetry and Community: Peter J. Harris

On Poetry and Community: Carla Rachel Sameth

Usually, I am one to find the thread of dark humor even in the worst of circumstances.

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Poet Laureate Fellows Interviews: Shin Yu Pai

On Poetry and Community: Willie Perdomo

On Poetry and Community: Jason Magabo Perez

On Poetry and Community: Glenis Redmond

On Poetry & Community: Erin Elizabeth Smith

On Poetry and Community: Joaquín Zihuatanejo

When I applied to be the inaugural poet laureate of Dallas, I did so with the idea of service in mind.

Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Gloria Muñoz

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The 2024 Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling Race

• Alan Taylor
• May 28, 2024

Crowds gathered at Cooper’s Hill, on a farm near Gloucester, England, once again yesterday, cheering as racers took part in the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake. Continuing a tradition that dates back at least 200 years, participants chased a nine-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese, running in a chaotic scramble down a very steep and uneven grassy hill, with the winner taking home the cheese.

This photo essay originally misspelled Abby Lampe’s name.

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Several participants tumble as they run in the annual cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill in Brockworth, Gloucester, in western England, on May 27, 2024. #

Competitors come tumbling down the hill in pursuit of a round of Double Gloucester cheese on May 27, 2024. #

Racers progress rapidly down the hill on May 27, 2024. #

Onlookers cheer during a race on May 27, 2024. #

Runners tumble and slide, chasing the cheese, on May 27, 2024. #

After winning one of the women's races, Abby Lampe celebrates at the bottom of the hill on May 27, 2024. #

Competitors take part in the uphill race on May 27, 2024. #

A cheese round is released at the start of a race on May 27, 2024. #

Competitors come tumbling down the hill in pursuit of a round of Double Gloucester cheese near the village of Brockworth on May 27, 2024. #

Runners slide and fall down Cooper's Hill on May 27, 2024. #

Competitors tumble down a muddy Cooper's Hill in pursuit of a round of Double Gloucester cheese on May 27, 2024. #

A competitor receives medical attention after competing in one of the races on May 27, 2024. #

Another group of runners chase the cheese down Cooper's Hill on May 27, 2024. #

Dylan Twiss, winner of one of the men's races, celebrates after competing in the annual Cooper's Hill cheese-rolling competition near the village of Brockworth, Gloucester, in western England, on May 27, 2024. #

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Language of Wars, genocides, and Conflict

WE ARE LOOKING FOR ESSAYS, REVIEWS, RESPONSES, POETRY, PROSE, AND VISUAL ART

Our engagement and  consideration of conflicts , both national and international, has undoubtedly changed in the 21st century, especially in recent years. With the aid of  media and modern technology , individuals and communities have a bigger space and opportunity to respond to  geopolitical events  which are both geographically far away and yet have never been closer.

Responses to  political conflicts, wars, and genocides,  however, must be  approached critically  together with the recognition of different roles and agents (such as international organisations, alliances or foreign governments), both current and past,  that shape the image, portrayal, and study  of these events.

In recent years, the rise of often  simplified mass media responses  (e.g. victim blaming or revisionism) to various painful historical events in human history has led to  a misuse of language  regarding such events as well as alleviation, conscious or not, of the atrocities occurring in our present and our past.

The language that is used to respond to political conflicts, acts of terrorism, wars, and crimes against humanity, however, should be challenged with the understanding that aggression of one country/ ethnicity/ religion/ group of individuals against another must be addressed appropriately with aggressor-victim dichotomy and not ambiguously.

ISSUES OF LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY | COMMUNAL MEMORY AND GENERATIONAL | EXPERIENCE OF WAR CULTURAL GUILT AND VICTIM BLAMING | FRAGMENTATION OF NARRATIVES | GENOCIDE AND HUMANITARIANISM | POLITICAL DIALOGUES | RESOLUTIONS AND AFTERMATHS | INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL VIOLENCE | JOURNALISM AND POPULISM DURING CONFLICT

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