Gaëlle Ledoré Monday, May 13th, 2013

Anglais M1

Victorian Political Poetry (1830s-1855): Voice of the Poor, Voice of an Ideal

The Victorian period (1820-1900) was an era of political and social reforms. From the

Reform Acts (1832, 1867 and 1884) to the abolition of slavery (1833) and the (moderate) control of

child labour (1848), the voice of the people would weigh more and more on political ground against

the upper classes. But first, they had to show they had a voice, and that not only the elite of the

society could decide for their future. From the 1830s to 1855, at a time of great instability, began

riots, pamphlets and... Victorian political poetry. Quite ignored in comparison to Victorian novels

(the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens...) nor even as appreciated as Romantic poetry, Victorian poetry

stood for itself as a new point of view over society and gave everybody a chance to express their

ideas and feelings. What is Victorian political poetry? With the help of 19 th century definitions and

critics, we will study the Radical poetry and the political writings of a laureate Victorian poet, Lord

Alfred Tennyson.

The influence of Romanticism on Victorian thought is essential to understand any work of

the 19th century, poetry included. William Wordsworth’s “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads (1800) is

still considered as one of the most important literary definition of poetry. He said that the language

of poetry should be close to the people’s way of speaking to express more realistic feelings, and so

to reach the truth. One of the main Victorian poet, literary critic and philosopher, Matthew Arnold

(1822-1888), related poetry to this idea of real feelings in the theory of ‘real estimate’:

‘The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and

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delighting us, as nothing else can. […] In reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent, and of the
strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we
read. But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kind of
estimate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a poem may count
to us historically, they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really.’
(Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry” in Essays in Criticism, p.237)

However, this extract shows that Arnold defended Wordsworth definition of poetry without

actually defending Romanticism, as it influences the reader with the personal estimate and so is not

the best poetry.

‘But we enter on burning ground as we approach the poetry of times so near to us –poetry like that of Byron,
Shelley, and Wordsworth –of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with passion. […]
We are often told that an era is opening in which we are to see multitudes of a common sort of readers, and masses
of a common sort of literature; that such readers do not want and could not relish anything better than such
literature, and that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. Even if good literature entirely lost
currency with the world, it would still be abundantly worth while to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never
will lose currency in the world, in spite of momentary appearances; it never will lose supremacy.’ (Matthew
Arnold, “The Study of Poetry” in Essays in Criticism, p.260)

The same way, medieval poetry, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales cannot be

compared to the Shakespearean poetry, as its only quality seems to be for him the nice use of

Middle English, which gives the reader a taste for old texts only for their age and not the literary

feelings. According to him, the feelings of poetry should not be in abstract emotions, but in the

emotions of the fact that the poet depicts:

‘Now in literature, […] the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the best ideas, on every
matter which literature touches, current at the time. […] For creative literary genius does not principally show
itself in discovering new ideas; that is rather the business of the philosopher: the grand work of literary genius is a
work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired
by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas […] –making beautiful works with
them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in order to work
freely; […] for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the

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power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.’ (Matthew Arnold, “The Function of
Criticism” in Essays in Criticism, pp.11-12)

Moreover, he linked poetry with religious feeling, like the Romantics, as the active

imagination of poetry is defined as an act a pure creation.1 Contrary to religion, poetry does not base

itself on miracles, but on inspiration and human imagination, which originates from memories; 2the

poet does not play God creating out of the blue, yet poetry is the proof that man was created from

the image of God:

‘Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and
now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.
Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its
unconscious poetry.’ (Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry” in Essays in Criticism, p.235)

On a completely different point of view, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), another philosopher

and literary critic, opposed his theory on poetry to both Wordsworth and Arnold. Poetry is not a

question of showing the truth, would it be to create literary or religious feelings, but a question of

understanding and believing. The reader does not need to witness the truth of poetry to be

convinced of it3:

‘The object of poetry is confessedly to act upon the emotions; and therein is poetry sufficiently
distinguished from what Wordsworth affirms to be its logical opposite, namely, not prose, but matter of fact or
science. The one addresses itself to the belief, the other to the feelings. The one does its work by convincing or
persuading; the other by moving. The one acts by presenting a proposition to the understanding, the other by
offering interesting objects of contemplation to the sensibilities.’ (John Stuart Mill, “Thoughts on poetry and

1 ‘Considérée dans sa cause, la poésie a pour origine l’imagination, notre faculté mère, notre faculté libre, la seule par
laquelle l’homme soit un être actif, car tous les autres, même la raison et la volonté, sont des facultés passives.’
(Pierre Larousse, “Poésie” from Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Vol. 19. France: Lacourt, 1991 (first
edited in 1866-1876)).
2 ‘Au point de vue de l’analyse, il y a trois faits à considérer dans l’imagination: 1° le souvenir, qui apporte ce que
l’on pourrait appeler les matériaux; 2° l’abstraction, qui étudie et compare ces éléments divers; 3° le jugement, qui
les admet ou les rejette.
La faculté d’imaginer est donc proprement le pouvoir d’associer des idées anciennes suivant un ordre nouveau.’
(Pierre Larousse, “Imagination” from Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Vol. 13. France: Lacourt, 1991
(first edited in 1866-1876). p.578.)
3 ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’ (John, XX: 29).

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its varieties” in Roman et poésie en Grande-Bretagne au XIXe siècle, p.154)

Arnold placed himself between Wordsworth and Mill: one defines poetry as the truth of

facts, the other as emotion; and he thought that poetry’s goal was the emotions of the idea. Like

Mill, he related literary feelings to religious belief, even though Mill put all feelings apart from

poetry and centered only on emotion and persuasion. Then, what is Victorian political poetry? Is it

moving like a post-Romantic literary genre or convincing like a philosophical essay?

Victorian political poetry derived from the influence of George Crabbe (1754-1832), a

surgeon, and one of the first English Radical poet and an inspiration for Lord Alfred Tennyson later

on. He wrote poetry about the harsh living of the working classes of the countryside with much

detail. However, society was changing, and the bad conditions of the peasantry made them move to

the cities to work in factories, and soon Crabbe’s poetry would become outdated. In his Monthly

Repository (1806-1838), a Unitarian newspaper converted to Radicalism in 1831, William Johnson

Fox (1784-1864), a literary critic and a political and religious orator, preferred a new kind of

political poetry, Chartist Poetry, and more especially Ebenezer Elliott. Fox wrote about Crabbe’s

poetry in a review of Elliott’s works:

‘It is poetry concerning the poor, but neither by the poor, nor for the poor. […] The poetry should be the language,
not of the observant and pitying gentleman, but of humanity in poverty, pouring forth its emotions for its own
gratification.’ (Isobel Armstrong, “Alternative Radical Poetry and its Problem” in Victorian Poetry:
Poetry, Poetics and Politics, p.130)

Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1749), also known as the Poet of the Poor or Corn-Law Rhymer,

because of his collection The Corn-Law Rhymes (1831), is the archetype of the working-class man

moving to the town to save his family from poverty. He was the son of a Calvinist Radical minister

of the Yorkshire who worked in iron trade. The father lost everything and died soon after, leaving

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Ebenezer totally destitute in 1816; but thanks to his sister-in-law, he started another iron trading

company in Sheffield, the Steel City, in 1819. In the space of ten years, the company flourished and

Elliott even became a steel manufacturer. From 1830, he struggled against the Bread Taxes and

Corn Laws and he began to publish his own Radical poetry:

‘“What is poetry?” has often been asked. To this question, Lord Bacon, a true poet, though he wrote in prose,
replies, “It is something divine; because it raises the mind, and hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows
of things to the desires of the soul; instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and history do.”
What is poetry? We ask of Hazlitt, another of the poets, who is neither submitted to the links of rhyme, nor more
majestic bondage of blank verse; and he poetically replies, “Poetry is the fine particle within us that expands,
rarifies, refines, raises our whole being –without it man’s life is poor as beasts’;” […] These are subtle and exalted
descriptions of poetry –passionate and imaginative poetry; but they are not complete. What is poetry? We inquire
Ebenezer Elliott, a Radical Poet, and he forcibly and briefly answers, – “What is poetry but impassioned truth?”’
(James Johnstone, “The Radical Poets” in Roman et poésie en Grande-Bretagne au XIXe siècle,
p.190)

Ebenezer Elliott went even beyond Wordsworth and Arnold: the only true poetical feeling is

the passion the poet wants to share. And fortunately for this essay, the Corn-Law Rhymer shared his

political and social passion in his poems. Indeed, British Chartism of the 1840s, demanding for

more political equality (male universal suffrage, annual parliamentary elections, secret ballots, end

of the rotten-boroughs, etc...) pushed the Corn-Law Rhymer toward a specific category of Radical

poetry: Chartist poetry. One of his best known Chartist poem is probably “The People’s Anthem”,

published in the Tait’s Edinburgh Review in 1848, usually sung to the tune of “Commonwealth” and

made into a song in 20th century in the musical Godspell (1971) with the title “Save the People”.

The refrain parodies the “God save the King/Queen” (1619?), used as the British national anthem

(even if there is no official anthem for the country):

When wilt thou save the people?

Oh, God of mercy! when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!

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Flowers of thy heart, oh, God, are they!
Let them not pass, like weeds, away!
Their heritage a sunless day!
God! save the people!

Shall crime bring crime for ever,

Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, oh, Father,
That man shall toil for wrong?
"No!" say thy mountains; "No!" thy skies
"Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
And songs be heard, instead of sighs."
God, save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?

Oh, God of Mercy! when?
The people, Lord, the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God! save the people! thine they are,
Thy children, as thy angels fair:
Save them from bondage, and despair!
God, save the people!

The fact that this poem was published in a newspaper. The Chartist movement remained as

small groups like The Working Men’s Association”, and never became influent. No editor outside

the Chartist circle would have published their works, the works of lower-class men with little

education. The Northern Star (1837-1852), a Yorkshire Chartist newspaper funded by the Irish MP

Fergus O’Connor, dedicated a poetry column in every issue. It aimed to educate the readers with

Shakespeare or early Radical poetry (Percy Shelley...), but also to give the working class a chance

to have their poetry published. Most of the Chartist poets stayed anonymous, the depiction of the

life of the working class and the strong political arguments could have been used against them (it is

not easy getting involved in politics without making enemies).

The Chartist poetry shows the feelings of a neglected part of the Victorian society; the

descriptions of factories and the life of the working classes help nowadays historians to study a

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point of view hard to analyse, because of little documents about them. Their style was between the

Romantic fervour, this ‘impassioned truth’ Elliott talked about, and the will of persuasion with

political beliefs in reforming society, just the way John Stuart Mill defined poetry. Unfortunately for

the Radicals, the movement stopped in 1848 and soon after the edition of its poetry did too. One of

the last Chartist collection of poems is Gerald Massey’s Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love

(1850). Though, it was far from being the end of Victorian political poetry, as wrote the journalist

and literary critic George Troup:

‘The number of volumes in verse issued during this dull year [1848] indicate that the poets or versifiers do not
despair of the world, and refuse to consider their art proscribed. […]
We strenuously contend against the gloomy notion that imaginative power, and the feelings that make
poetry, are fading far amongst us. The statement is utterly untrue, and can only originate in an utter ignorance of
the present and a wilful worshipping of the past.’ (George Troup, “Poets and poetry” in Roman et poésie
en Grande-Bretagne au XIXe siècle, p.171)

Indeed, the most famous Victorian poet laureate, Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), even

admired by Queen Victoria herself, brought his own way of thinking about society and a specific

kind of poetry; so personal that even today it is difficult to classified it. Dr Anna Barton and Dr Jane

Hodson, specialists of Romantic and Victorian literature at the University of Sheffield, qualified

Tennyson of ‘fake Victorian’ or ‘Romantic Victorian’, a sort of Victorian writer who thought he was

born one generation too late, as such rejected Victorian literature and wanted to compose Romantic

poetry. But we have already demonstrated that Romanticism deeply influenced Victorian literature;

so was Tennyson ‘a worshiper of the past’, or did he interest himself about the world of his time and

its problems?

The logical answer to this question tend to be a frustrating “both”: Tennyson employed his

style to be closer to Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s, tried to propagate feelings with words like a

Romantic and wrote anti-Napoleonic works such as the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington

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(1852), but at the same time he defended an ideal of an evolving society. Tennyson was the proof

that Romantic poetry and the Victorian thought were different, but not incompatible4:

‘Our age was supposed to have risen over the ornamental in literature, and to be an entirely practical,
mechanical, railway, and steam-engine age in everything. Some daring versifiers endeavoured in reply to show
that there was poetry in rails and locomotives, and that the triumph of mechanical days were parts of a great poem.
[…] The locomotion of the age should not entrap its imaginative tendencies. Men should not love nature less,
because they see more natural objects now than formerly in the same cost of time, and a less cost of money.
Steam-power has opened the country to the town, and made the country better acquainted with the town. It brings
men nearer to each other, and should in that way expand at once the heart and the mind – the intellectual and the
moral powers.’ (George Troup, “Poets and poetry” in Roman et poésie en Grande-Bretagne au XIXe
siècle, p.170)

In fact, Tennyson’s poetry explains itself the main change between Romanticism and

Victorianism: machines and modern science5. The baron-poet read Charles Lyell’s theories about

geology in The Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the

Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes now in Operation (1830-1833), which marked the first

division between the Creationists and the Evolutionists, later enlarged with Charles Darwin’s

Origin of Species (1859). William Fox wrote in The Westminster Review (in which first appeared the

expression Darwinism in 1860) about the collection Poems (1842):

‘The great principle of human improvement is at work in poetry as well as every where else. […] Even that which
will secure a succession of creations out of the unbounded and everlasting materials of poetry, our ever-growing
acquaintance with the philosophy of mind and of man, and the increasing facility with which that philosophy is
4‘Arnold dénonçait le caractère morbide et malsain d’une poésie contemplative à l’excès, celle des poètes dit
“spasmodiques”, et en appelait à une poésie proche de l’idéal classique par la rigueur de sa forme et la noblesse de son
idéal moral. Il s’agissait pour Arnold d’une nécessité d’autant plus urgente que son époque souffrait, selon lui, d’un
manque d’idéal moral et d’un malaise spirituel qui ne pouvait être surmonté que par l’étude des périodes passées de
notre civilisation et l’imitation des exemples qu’elles nous ont laissés. Arnold fut démenti par nombre de critiques au
cours du siècle qui voyait la vocation de l’époque victorienne se réaliser dans la recherche du progrès en se tournant
résolument vers l’avenir et non en regardant derrière elle.’ (Odile Boucher-Rivalain, Roman et poésie en Grande-
Bretagne au XIXe siècle, p.178-179)
5‘La poésie de Tennyson, combinant la description et l’analyse des sentiments, est l’exemple par excellence de la
nouvelle direction prise par la poésie post-romantique. L’idée selon laquelle la divulgation de nouvelles connaissances
scientifiques constitue une menace pour l’imagination poétique est vigoureusement démentie.[...] On affirme que la
poésie a pour vocation d’exprimer les aspirations profondes d’une époque baignée dans un climat de recherche
intellectuelle et spirituelle. Voyant dans cette nouvelle tendance plus qu’une évolution par rapport à la poésie
romantique, certains critiques n’hésitent pas à parler d’une nouvelle race de poètes et d’un type de poésie radicalement
nouvelle.’ (Odile Boucher-Rivalain, Roman et poésie en Grande-Bretagne au XIXe siècle, p.160)

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applied. This is the essence of poetic power, and he who possesses it never need to furbish up ancient armour, or
to go to the East Kehama-hunting or bulbul-catching. Poetry, like charity, begins at home. Poetry, like morality, is
founded on the precept, know thyself. Poetry, like happiness, is in the human heart. […] Metaphysics must be the
stem of poetry for the plant to thrive. […]
The most important department in which metaphysical science has been a pioneer for poetry is in the
analysis of particular states of mind; […] it was for the philosophers to be the first discoverers and settlers, and for
poetry afterwards to reap the advantage of their labours. This has only be done recently, or rather is only
beginning to be done at all.’ (William Fox, “Tennyson’s Poems” in Roman et poésie en Grande-
Bretagne au XIXe siècle, p.166-167)

The poem which describes Tennyson’s interrogations the best on the place of man in Nature

and the evolution of the Earth is in fact the best known and admired: In Memoriam A.H.H.

(published in 1850, written from 1834), commemorating the death of his best friend, fellow poet

and future brother-in-law Arthur Hallam (1811-1833). The themes of the fragility of the human

being, time running out and burying recur throughout the 133 cantos with the lexical field of stones

and hills6:

‘But I should turn my ears and hear

The moaning of the homeless sea,

The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Aeonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be.’ (In Memoriam, XXXV, l. 8-12, p.1155)

‘“So careful of the type?” but no.

From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone
She [Nature] cries, “A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing; all shall go.

“Thou makest thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:

6‘The brilliance of In Memoriam is its capacity to assimilate an investigation of psychogenetic, linguistic and geological
movements to one another. To research into what remains of both geological and human ‘remains’ is the project of the
poem. The research into mourning is a research into history and culture.’ (Isobel Armstrong, “From Geology to
Pathology: In Memoriam (1850) to Maud (1855)” in Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, p. 257)

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I know no more.” […]

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law–
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed–

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?’ (In Memoriam, LVI, l. 1-8 and 13-20, p. 1159)

Furthermore, the mid-1830s poetry depicts the interest of Tennyson for engineering and

more especially new mean of traveling (train, hot air balloons...). In the poem “Locksley Hall”

(1835) in the collection Poem of 1842, the narrative voice dreams of an industrial utopia:

‘There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,

In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind
[…]
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.’ (“Locksley Hall”, l.165-166 and 181-
182, p.1134)

Less direct than the Radical poets, Tennyson expressed his political convictions in sad

romances. For example, the narrator of “Locksley Hall” cannot marry the lady he loves because of

her higher rank; she is finally wed to a man of her condition. Her lover then cries this criticism of

the corruption of society:

‘Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!’ (“Locksley Hall”, l. 59-62, p. 1131)

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 If there is a criticism of society, appears also an ideal of the poet. The feelings of the

Romantics turn into a call to change society for the best, for a world free from war in which the

nations would be united in one country:

‘Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

For I dipped into the future, as far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm;

Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.’ (“Locksley Hall”, l. 117-130, pp. 1132-1133)

Yet, the vision of the narrative voice cannot go further than the dream of an utopia.

Tennyson foreshadowed air transports and the European Union, but he did not think that men could

turn machines into military devices. He did not intend to convince anyone, he was just trying to

give his point of view and thus his poetry does not correspond to John Stuart Mill’s definition, but

he definitely wanted to show that society could evolved, because he thought evolving was in human

nature as well. Tennyson’s political poetry gave the Victoria a new look over society, a leap to the

future and not only a criticism of the present, but never tries to say that it is the right thing to do.

Actually, there is one exception to this argument. Tennyson did try to influence the debate on

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the relationship between men and women. In another narrative in verse, The Princess (1842), the

hero, a prince, demonstrates why the behaviour of the princess, who refused to marry him and had

established a university for women, is wrong. This text became an important subject at a time when

philosophers and politicians debated on the place of women in society. 7 First, this poem seems to

join the conservative point of view: the woman should not be educated and should obey her father

and then her husband. However, the final part marked a turning point from the separation of sexes:

‘For the woman is not undevelopt man,

But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love would be slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of a woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail the childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;’ (“The woman’s cause is man’s” from The Princess, VII, l. 259-
270, p.1137)

According to the prince, everybody should keep their place in society, men at work and

women at home, but the differences of character of both sexes should disappear through time. Then,

it is by gaining the morality of women that men would stop killing each other, and women have to

be mentally strong and clever like men (of course it is not misogynous!). Only then can the

narrative voice of “Locksley Hall” have his utopia. Even if the portrayal of women in The Princess

remains archaic for the 21st century reader, in the 19th century that was revolutionary. Tennyson was

a prophetic poet, both turned towards the past and towards the future, and always comparing his

7‘The Princess was Tennyson’s attempt to address the contemporary debate over woman’s proper role. […] The
prince’s final vision, in which he imagines a future of gradual change, by which men and women adopt the strength of
the other while maintaining their distinct natures, has been a key text in discussing Victorian constructions of
masculinity and femininity.’ (Note on “The woman’s cause is man’s” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Eighth Edition, Vol. 2, p.1136)

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own society. Matthew Arnold thought he was too influenced by the personal estimate of the

Romantics and the historical estimate of Homer’s Odyssey (“The Loto-Eaters” in 1833, “Ulysses”

in 1842) or medieval myths (The Lady of Shalott in 1832, The Idylls of the King from 1856 to 1885,

Harold in 1876...), to be a good poet. The success of In Memoriam permitted Tennyson to become

the most famous Victorian poet, and even a Poet Laureate after Wordsworth’s death.

In the 19th century, the definition of poetry changed from one poet to another, from one critic

from another, but the importance of an idea in the poem remained totally primordial for all. Was it

for the Radical and the Chartist poets of for Tennyson, they all shared their idea of society; the first

group described the difficulties of prejudiced working class of their time, the Poet Laureate

preferred to share his ideal of future society. Victorian political poetry draws the portrait of a society

in movement, evolving from the philosophy of sympathy of the Romantics to the Industrial

Revolution. The same way as essays, poetry expresses points of view over the human condition,

sometimes with more accuracy thanks to the experience of the poet.

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 Bibliography

Primary sources:

Arnold, Matthew, Essays in Criticism, J.M. Dent & Sons. London: Everyman’s Library, 1964 (first
edited in 1906).

Massey, Gerald, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love on Gerald Massey: http://gerald-
massey.org.uk/massey/cpm_vof_index.htm (access on April 21st, 2013).

Mill, John Stuart, “What is Poetry?” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth
Edition, Vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 (first published
in 1962). pp.1044-1051.

Tennyson (Lord), Alfred, “Hands All Around” from The Examiner, February 7th, 1852 on Telelib:
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/tiresias/handsallround.html (access on
April 13th, 2013).
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, ed. Edward Moxon. London:
Bradbury and Evans, 1852.
“Locksley Hall”, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth
Edition, Vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 (first published
in 1962). pp.1129-1135.
“The woman’s cause is the man’s”, from The Princess in The Norton
Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2006 (first published in 1962). pp.1136.
In Memoriam A.H.H., Obiit MCMXXXIII, excerpt from The Norton
Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2006 (first published in 1962). pp.1138-1188.

Secondary sources:
Armstrong, Isobel, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics. London: Routledge, 1993.

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