Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart is a significant and
timely study of nineteenth-century poetry and poetics. It considers
why and how the heart became a vital image in Victorian poetry, and
argues that the intense focus on heart imagery in many major
Victorian poems highlights anxieties in this period about the
ability of poetry to act upon its readers. In the course of the
nineteenth century, this study argues, increased doubt about the
validity of feeling led to the depiction of the literary heart as
alienated, distant, outside the control of mind and will. This
coincided with a notable rise in medical literature specifically
concerned with the pathological heart, and with the development of
new techniques and instruments of investigation such as the
stethoscope. As poets feared for the health of their own hearts,
their poetry embodies concerns about a widespread culture of
heartsickness in both form and content. In addition, concerns about
the heart's status and actions reflect upon questions of religious
faith and doubt, and feed into issues of gender and nationalism.
This book argues that it is vital to understand how this wider
culture of the heart informed poetry and was in turn influenced by
poetic constructs. Individual chapters on Barrett Browning, Arnold,
and Tennyson explore the vital presence of the heart in major works
by these poets--including, Aurora Leigh, "Empedocles on Etna," In
Memoriam, and Maud--while the wide-ranging opening chapters present
an argument for the mutual influence of poetry and physiology in
the period and trace the development of new theories of rhythm as
organic and affective.
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