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Unit 6: Major Literary Terms-VI

Notes

Pre-Raphaelitism in poetry had major influence upon the writers of the Decadence
as well as upon Gerard Manley Hopkins and W.B. Yeats, both of whom were also
influenced by Ruskin and visual Pre-Raphaelitism.

In the mid-19th century, a group of young British artists caused shock and scandal when they revealed
the existence of their ‘secret Brotherhood’ dedicated to overthrowing the artistic conventions of the
day.
Steeped in symbolism, boasting an almost unnatural eye for realism, and richly coloured, the works
of the Pre-Raphaelites consciously tried to turn back the clock to the days of the early Renaissance,
while simultaneously insisting on painting and drawing their subjects from direct observation.
Their impact was significant, and would go on to influence numerous additional writers and
designers beyond their initial small circle in the years after their first successes. Today they are
widely seen as one of the first avant-garde art movements in history, and the instigators of numerous
later artistic and social movements.
The poetry of drawing: Pre-Raphaelite designs, studies and watercolours are the most comprehensive
survey of Pre-Raphaelite works on paper to date, and is presented with the assistance of the
Birmingham Museum. All of the leading figures of the period are represented, including the original
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti), the artist and social critic John Ruskin,
and the second-wave of Pre-Raphaelites (including Burne-Jones, Sandys and Solomon).
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
beyond the aesthetic surface, to which he, like the painters, aggressively draws attention. One must
mention the Browninesque element in Pre-Raphaelite poetry because it appears intermittently all
the way up to Hopkins in self-consciously difficult language, the dramatic monologue, and elaborate
applications of biblical typology.
Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism, nonetheless, has most in common with the poets of this group, all of
whom draw upon the poetic continuum that descends from Spenser through Keats and Tennyson—
upon the poetic line, in other words, that emphasizes lush vowel sounds, sensuous description,
subjective psychological states, elaborate personification, and complex poetic forms, such as the
sestina, borrowed from Italian and Provençal love poetry.

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