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Swinburne's Mature Standards of Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ruth C. Child*
Affiliation:
Dickinson Junior College

Extract

From the standpoint of his literary criticism, we may say that Swinburne's mature period began in the year 1867, after his defense of the Poems and Ballads, when he turned to an absorbing interest in the freedom of Italy, and began to write poems of fervent patriotism. This inevitably led him away from his intransigeant defense of art for art's sake, which had played so large a part in the Blake, and had helped to shape all his main criticism through Poems and Reviews, in 1866.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1937 , pp. 870 - 879
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 See Georges Lafourcade, La Jeunesse de Swinburne, Vol. ii (Université de Strasbourg, 1928).

2 Works, Jan, 242–244.—All the references in this paper, unless otherwise noted, are to the Complete Works of Swinburne, Bonchurch Edition, ed. E. Gosse and T. J. Wise (London: Wm. Heinemann, 1925–27).

3 See for example “Blake,” xvi, 133–140.

4 xv, 147.

5 xv, 305.

6 “Notes on the Text of Shelley,” xv, 397.

7 “La Légende des Siècles,” xiii, 117.

8 “King Lear,” xi, 239.

9 “Three Stages of Shakespeare,” xi, 125–126.

10 Italics mine. “Wordsworth and Byron,” xiv, 160.

11 “L'Année Terrible,” xiii, 243.

12 Ibid., p. 242.

13 “Wordsworth and Byron,” xiv, 161.

14 “Arnold,” xv, 115.

15 “Morris,” xv, 52–53.

16 “Rossetti,” xv, 4.

17 “Three Stages of Shakespeare,” xi, 138.

18 “Morris,” xv, 55.

19 “Rossetti,” xv, 5.

20 “Marlowe,” xi, 272.

21 See for instance “Morris,” xv, 61, and “Arnold,” xv, 99–101.

22 “Coleridge,” xv, 146.

23 “Rossetti,” xv, 27.

24 Apropos of Whitman, in “Under the Microscope,” xvi, 415, note.

25 “Three Stages of Shakespeare,” xi, 7; see pp. 7–9. See also “Arnold,” xv, 89, and “Under the Microscope,” xvi, 415—416.

26 “Rossetti,” xv, 26.

27 “Arnold,” xv, 62.

28 “Rossetti,” xv, 44.

29 “Arnold,” xv, 93; “Morris,” xv, 51–52; “Simeon Solomon,” xv, 458; “Coleridge,” xv, 141.

30 “Nichol's Hannibal,” xv, 464.

31 “Arnold,” xv, 86.

32 Ibid., p. 72.

33 Ibid. pp. 97–98.

34 “Webster,” xi, 281.

35 “Short Notes on English Poets,” xiv, 101.

36 “Webster,” xi,314.

37 “Coleridge,” xv, 154.

38 Ibid., p. 154.

39 Ibid., p. 147.

40 Ibid., p. 147.

41 “Marlowe,” xi, 271.

42 Ibid., p. 273.

43 “Wordsworth and Byron,” xiv, 225.

44 “Coleridge,” xv, 141.

45 “Webster,” xi, 294.

46 Ibid., p. 304.

47 “Tennyson and Musset,” xiv, 303–304.

48 “Arnold,” xv, 88.

49 “Three Stages of Shakespeare,” xi, 56.

50 “Webster,” xi, 281.

51 “Wordsworth and Byron,” xiv, 217.

52 “Webster,” xi, 299.

53 “Notes on the Text of Shelley,” xv, 383.

54 “Notes on the Text of Shelley,” xv, 381, note.

55 “Rossetti,” xv, 34.

56 “Middleton,” xi, 339.

57 “Ford” xii, 381–382.

58 “Ford,” xii, 386.

59 “Three Stages of Shakespeare,” xi, 110.

60 Ibid., p. 109, 110. For other references in the Age of Shakespeare to the “moral” effect depending on character nobly presented, see “Webster,” xi, 289, 296–297, 312–313; “Dekker,” xi, 327–328; “Marston,” xi, 355; “Middleton,” xi, 392–393, 400–401; “Heywood,” xi, 445, 447. For other cases where there is the same implication without the actual use of the word “moral,” see “Dekker,” xi, 324,328-329; “Marston,” xi, 368, 375, 377.

61 “Under the Microscope,” xvi, 404.

62 Ibid., pp. 405.

63 Ibid., p. 409.

64 “Charlotte Brontë,” xiv, 13.

65 Ibid., pp. 17, 18.

66 Ibid., p. 20.

67 “Ford,” xii, p. 383.

68 Ibid., pp. 382–383.