Page 163 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes Grierson and Smith observe: “Never since Venus and Adonis, Hero and Leander and the Songs and
Sonnets of Donne had the passion of the senses been presented with such daring frankness.”
Swinburne struck the readers with as intense a feeling of shock mixed with amazement as Byron
had done before him. Indeed, it is to be admitted that the Pre-Raphaelites had an emotional over
plus which led them to excessive sensuousness not entirely free from the immoral taint. Swinburne
by his “protracted adolescence rather than by adult passion”, paints, as A. C. Ward puts it, “the
bitter blossoms of fierce kisses, the lips intertwined and bitten, the bruised throats and bosoms,
the heaving limbs, the dead desires and barren lusts.” All this is “fleshly” enough.

20.3.6 Metre and Music

Pre-Raphaelite poetry is rich not only in pictorial quality but also in music. The trouble is that the
Pre-Raphaelites go to excess in both. Swinburne exhibits both the merits and demerits of being
over-musical. The excessive use of alliteration and onomatopoeic effects makes often for a cloying
sweetness. Legouis observes: “Vowels call to vowels and consonants to consonants, and these
links often seem stronger than the links of thought or imagery.”

Notes According to Compton-Rickett, Swinburne’s effects are harmonic rather than melodic.
As an instance, see the following lines from his Tristram of Lyonesse (1882):
Nor shall they feel or fear, whose date is done,
Aught that made once more dark the living sun

And bitterer in their breathing lips the breath
Than the dark dawn and bitter dust of death
Alliteration is good if it does not become a persistent mannerism, and if it does not “out-sound”
the sense.

Task Write a short note on Pre-Raphaelite Poetry.

20.4 Summary

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.
This dream-world is often provided by the middle Ages which had, even before the Pre-
Raphaelites, exercised a strong hold on the minds of some Romantics like Coleridge,
Keats, and Scott.
Referring to Rossetti, Compton-Rickett observes: “That the pictorial element is more insis-
tent in Rossetti than in Keats is obviously due to the fact that Rossetti’s outlook on the
world is essentially that of the painter. He thinks and feels in pigments.
The sensuousness of the Pre-Raphaelites was considered culpable by the prudish Victori-
ans when it came to the beauties of the human body.
Grierson and Smith observe: “Never since Venus and Adonis, Hero and Leander and the
Songs and Sonnets of Donne had the passion of the senses been presented with such daring
frankness.”

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