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Jayatee Bhattacharya, Lovely Professional University Unit 20: The Victorian Age (Pre-Raphaelite Poetry)

Unit 20: The Victorian Age (Pre-Raphaelite Poetry) Notes

CONTENTS

Objectives
Introduction
20.1 Literary Repercussions
20.2 The Antecedents of Pre-Raphaelitism
20.3 Salient Features of Pre-Raphaelites
20.3.1 Break with Tradition
20.3.2 Medievalism
20.3.3 Devotion to Detail
20.3.4 Sensuousness
20.3.5 Fleshly School of Poetry
20.3.6 Metre and Music
20.4 Summary
20.5 Keywords
20.6 Review Questions
20.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
Define literary repercussions.
Describe the antecedents of pre-raphaelitism.
Explain salient features of pre-raphaelites.

Introduction

Those poets who had some connection with the Pre-Raphaelite circle include Christina Rossetti,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Meredith, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Pre-
Raphaelitism in poetry had major influence upon the writers of the Decadence of the 1890s, such as
Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Michael Field, and Oscar Wilde, as well as upon Gerard Manley
Hopkins and William Butler Yeats, both of whom were influenced by John Ruskin and visual Pre-
Raphaelitism.
Pre-Raphaelitism in painting had two forms or stages, first, the hard-edge symbolic naturalism of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood that began in 1849 and, second, the moody, erotic medievalism
that took form in the later 1850s. Many critics imply that only this second, or Aesthetic, Pre-
Raphaelitism has relevance to poetry. In fact, although the combination of realistic style with
elaborate symbolism that distinguishes the early movement appears in a few poems, particularly
in those by James Collinson and the Rossettis, this second stage finally had the largest at least the
most easily noticeable influence on literature.
Nonetheless, if one looks for a poet whose work parallels the artistic project of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, one immediately notices Robert Browning , whose work was enormously popular
with them all and a particular influence on Rossetti, who wrote out Pauline (1833) from the British
Museum copy. Like the paintings of the Brotherhood, Browning’s poems simultaneously extend
the boundaries of subject and create a kind of abrasive realism, and like the work of the young
painters, his also employ elaborate symbolism drawn from biblical types to carry the audience

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