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Hazzaz Al Abtahee Nijhum

Associate Professor Mohosin Reza

English- 3627

04 November, 2020

Inside the Minds of the Victorian Poets

Victorian poetry preoccupies with studying human mind. It is argued that, the Victorian

Poets, inheriting from their Romantic forerunners the belief that subjective thoughts and feelings

were most important materials of poetry and they used their writing to give expressions to mental

process and to scrutinize and analyze those process. Psychological analysis became an

increasingly important element of poetic theory and practice in the mid nineteenth century. This

development coincided with the rise of the scientific discipline of psychology and with the

growing recognition that the workings of the mind could be studied using the analytical method

of science. The writings of the Victorian poets often employed similar methods, but, at the same

time the language and the tone of their psychological verse and specially their ambivalent use of

terms such as “brains”, “mind”, “soul” voiced an unresolved tension felt throughout Victorian

culture between materialist, physiological theories of psychology and metaphysical or religious

account of selfhood. The poetry of Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, and George Elliot

present interest in contemporary psychological theory. Ranging across lyric verse, epic poetry

and the dramatic monologue. Victorian Poetry simultaneously drew on, resisted and contributed

to the spread of scientific theories of mind.

Victorian era poets such as Robert Browning and Tennyson developed more purposeful

poetry that focused on narrative and concrete. Tennyson plumbs the depths of his own
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consciousness while also giving voice to the national consciousness of Victorian Society.

Browning’s poetry not only convey settings but also reveal speaker’s character. Matthew

Arnold’s poetry shares his inner feelings with great clarity and his questioning of faith. Gerard

Hopkin’s poetry is devotional with dense layer of imageries and metaphors. Thus, Victorian

poetry mainly focused on: realism, masses, pessimism, science and technology, questioning to

God, morality, sense of responsibility, myths, humor and dramatic monologue.