The Nineteenth-Century Sonnet

What was the appeal of 'the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground' to Romantic and Victorian poets? How did a form which had fallen into disuse in the early eighteenth-century become a central and enduring part of nineteenth-century poetry? This study traces the history and development of the sonnet throughout the nineteenth-century, examining the work of Wordsworth, Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, George Meredith and a number of other key canonical and non-canonical writers.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2006

'In Phelan's very capable hands, this short and seemingly specialized study proves to be absorbing, far ranging, and rich in implication.' - Choice (Journal of the American Library Association)

Autorentext
JOSEPH PHELAN is Senior Lecturer in English at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is the editor of Clough: Selected Poems (1995) and the author of a number of articles on nineteenth-century literature and culture.

Inhalt
Introduction The Wordsworthian Sonnet Revival: Poems in Two Volumes (1807) 'Transcripts of the Private Heart': The Sonnet and Autobiography The Political Sonnet The Devotional Sonnet 'Illegal Attachments': The Amatory Sonnet Sequence 'Thought's Pure Diamond': The Sonnet at the End of the Century Notes Bibliography Index