The Shadow of Ourselves: Early Victorian Poetics

Abstract

Examines the effects of the transformation of poetic theory from a classical view in which poems reflect the external world to a more solipsistic view that poems reflect only the perceptions of the poet. Posits that the inability of Romantic and post-Romantic poets to see the external world accurately is reflected in their work by the metaphor of the shadow. Looks at the impact of that view on several important poems by Tennyson, Arnold, and Browning. Demonstrates how Ruskin and Carlyle criticized the damages wrought by such solipsism.