What’s the Import?: Nineteenth-Century Poems and Contemporary Critical Practice

188 Pages·2007·1.005 MB·English

by  Kerry McSweeney

What's the Import?
This page intentionally left blank
What's the Import?
Nineteenth-Century Poems
and Contemporary Critical Practice
kerry mcsweeney
(cid:74)
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2007
isbn 978-0-7735-3202-1
Legal deposit second quarter 2007
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our
publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McSweeney, Kerry, 1941–
What’s the import?: nineteenth-century poems and contemporary
critical practice / Kerry McSweeney.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-7735-3202-1
1. English poetry – 19th century – History and criticism – Theory, etc.
2. American poetry – 19th century – History and criticism – Theory, etc.
3. Criticism. 4. Aesthetics. I. Title.
pn1261.m33 2007 821'.809 c2006-906592-6
This book was typeset by Interscript in 10/13 Palatino.
This page intentionally left blank
For David, Mel, Keith, and Peter
Contents
Acknowledgments • ix
1 • Introduction • 3
2 • Performing “The Solitary Reaper” and “Tears, idle tears” • 10
3 • Victorian Poems on Paintings • 28
4 • Indefinitiveness of Meaning in Parabolic Poems • 47
5 • Aesthetic and Ethical Value in Bigg’s “An Irish Picture” • 67
6 • The Cruxes of Whitman's “The Sleepers” • 73
7 • Grief as a Lyric Subject in Dickinson • 87
8 • Hopkins’ Godless Poems • 108
9 • Influence and Resistance in Hardy’s Poetry • 124
10 • Afterword: Two Browning Poems • 143
Notes • 149
Works Cited • 157
Index • 171
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
Although I did not realize it at the time, this book began to germi-
nate while I was working on two other books on nineteenth-cen-
tury poetry, both published in 1998: The Language of the Senses:
Sensory-Perceptual Dynamics in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Thoreau, Whit-
man, and Dickinson; and Supreme Attachments: Studies in Victorian
Love Poetry. The former offered an empirical alternative to theoreti-
cally based critical models. In the preface to the latter, I spoke of a
tension I felt while writing between social and cultural contextual-
ization onthe one hand and aesthetic and evaluative consider-
ations on theother.
Early on, I received much guidance in my readings in philosophical
aesthetics from my then-colleague Paisley Livingston. I am also grate-
ful in different ways to numerous other persons, including Mark Pla-
mondon, Mark Diachyshyn, and the other students in my McGill
seminars on nineteenth-century poetry. I am particularly grateful to
Philip Cercone for his encouragement and support. As always, my
greatest debt is to my wife, Susanne. This book is dedicated to several
friends and fellow English professors, with thanks for the pleasure of
their company over many years.
An earlier version of the second chapter appeared in Criticism
and of the fourth in Style. An abbreviated version of the seventh
appeared in Victorian Poetry; the tenth was first published in Ro-
mantic/Victorian: Influence and Resistance in Nineteenth-Century En-
glish Poetry.
Poetry by Emily Dickinson is reprinted by permission of the pub-
lishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from the poems of
emily dickinson, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The