- 186 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
Barrow's timely book is the first to examine the link between Victorian poetry, the study of language, and political reform. Focusing on a range of literary, scientific, and political texts, Barrow demonstrates that nineteenth-century debates about language played a key role in shaping emergent ideas about popular sovereignty. While Victorian scientists studied the origins of speech, the history of dialects, and the barrier between human and animal language, poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Thomas Hardy drew on this research to explore social unrest, the expansion of the electorate, and the ever-widening boundaries of empire. Science, Language, and Reform in Victorian Poetry recovers unacknowledged links between poetry, philology, and political culture, and contributes to recent movements in literary studies that combine historicist and formalist approaches.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Language, Poetry, and Radical Reform in Victorian Britain
- 1 âNo perfect codeâ: Elizabeth Barrett Browningâs Political Poetics and Womenâs Language
- 2 âAnd talks to his own self, howeâer he pleaseâ: Robert Browningâs Antisocial Speech and Mid-Victorian Reform
- 3 The âyelp of the beastâ: Alfred Tennysonâs Animal Language, Victorian Empire, and the End of Politics
- 4 To âobliterate his local colourâ: Thomas Hardyâs âProvincialâ Poetry and the Reform Act of 1884
- Conclusion: Revisiting Philology
- Bibliography
- Index