The Heart’’s Events: The Victorian Poetry of Relationships

Dr Ball offers an analysis and evaluation of a number of Victorian long poems and groups of lyrics which trace the course of close personal relationships. Her argument is that whereas Romantic treatment of such material was limited, the Victorian poets not only made this emotional territory their own but explored it with vigour, variety and enterprise, and great technical resource. This is apparent, as Dr Ball shows, whether the poets concern themselves with crises such as loss through death - In Memoriam, Patmore’s odes of bereavement - or breakdown - Modern Love, Maud, James Lee’s Wife - or whether they portray the intricate flux of mutual attraction and courtship, as in Amours de Voyage, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich and The Angel in the House. The Heart’s Events brings out strongly the experimental vitality and range of Victorian poetry and, in particular, its sensitive imaginative response to the subtleties of psychological time and change in its records of the inner histories of love.

Patricia M. Ball was Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds. She is the author of The Central Self and The Science of Aspects.