Algernon Charles Swinburne

Unofficial Laureate

Catherine Maxwell, Stefano Evangelista

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780719099960
  9780719086250
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526130488
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909), dramatist, novelist and critic, was late Victorian England's unofficial Poet Laureate. Swinburne was admired by his contemporaries for his technical brilliance, his facility with classical and medieval forms, and his courage in expressing his sensual, erotic imagination. He was one of the most important Victorian poets, the founding figure for British aestheticism, and the dominant influence for fin-de-siècle and many modernist poets. This collection of eleven new essays by leading international scholars offers a thorough revaluation of this fascinating and complex figure. It situates him in the light of current critical work on cosmopolitanism, politics, form, Victorian Hellenism, gender and sexuality, the arts, and aestheticism and its contested relation to literary modernism. The essays in this collection reassess Swinburne's work and reconstruct his vital and often provocative contribution to the Victorian cultural debate.

Table of contents

• Algernon Charles Swinburne: Unofficial Laureate
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF FIGURES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• A NOTE ON THE TEXTS
• 1 INTRODUCTION: Catherine Maxwell and Stefano Evangelista
• Part I: CULTURAL DISCOURSE
• Part II: FORMS
• Part III: INFLUENCE
• REFERENCES
• INDEX