Swinburne

Abstract

Swinburne Yisrael Levin (bio) One thing one notices when reviewing last year's Swinburne materials is its lack of an overarching thematic thread. Swinburne is discussed in many different contexts that defy a single critical trend. On the one hand, this makes the work of the reviewer more challenging since it becomes harder to define a clear critical narrative. But on the other hand, such a broad array of readings also positively helps to expand Swinburne studies as a whole. In other words, the new direction in Swinburne studies is the lack of direction. This is a welcome development that brings to the fore the richness of the Swinburnean subject matters, and that will, I hope, encourage a further critical exploration of his corpus. Possibly the most exciting publication of the past year, Algernon Charles Swinburne: Unofficial Laureate (ed. Catherine Maxwell and Stefano Evangelista [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013]) certainly contributes to the expansion of Swinburne studies by introducing a wide variety of critical voices and approaches. The eleven essays included in this volume were originally presented at the Swinburne Centenary Conference that took place at the University of London in 2009. The volume is divided into three parts: "Cultural Discourse," "Form," and "Influence," which help define the different contexts in which Swinburne operated throughout his career. The section on cultural discourse includes four articles that explore Swinburne's interaction with broad nineteenth-century cultural phenomena. Evangelista's "Swinburne's French Voice: Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Mediation in Aesthetic Criticism" (pp. 15-32) draws attention to Swinburne's critical work and more specifically to his interest in French literature, which Evangelista perceives as expressing Swinburne's attempt to promote "a theory of aesthetic cosmopolitanism" (p. 17). Julia F. Saville's "Swinburne's Swimmers: From Insular Peace to the Anglo-Boer War" (pp. 33-51) discusses Swinburne's use of swimming imagery in his republican poetry and traces the shift that took place in his political attitudes from radicalism to conservatism. Charlotte Ribeyrol's "Swinburne: A Nineteenth-Century Hellene?" (pp. 52-68) explores Swinburne's fascination with the darker, more liminal aspects of Greek culture, which differed from the common Victorian view that regarded Hellenism as the epitome of rational order. Finally, Laurel Brake's "'A Juggler's Trick?': Swinburne's Journalism 1857-75" (pp. 69-92) focuses on Swinburne's rarely acknowledged career in journalism, and discusses the manner in which he used journalism "to hone his skills as a critic, puff the work of his circle, circulate his poetry, and establish his reputation and literary identity and [End Page 418] authority" (p. 90). The volume's section on form provides an interesting review of Swinburne's formal innovation and its application. Yopie Prins' "Metrical Discipline: Algernon Swinburne on the 'The Flogging-Block'" (pp. 95-124) draws an interesting connection between the development of Swinburne's metrics and the rhythmical nature of disciplinary flagellation which he experienced first-hand as a student at Eaton. In "What Goes Around: Swinburne's A Century of Roundels" (pp. 125-137) , Herbert Tucker investigates Swinburne's adoption of the roundel and demonstrates how poetic form can literally change poetic meaning. Marion Thain's "Desire Lines: Swinburne and the Lyric Crisis" (pp. 138-154), on the other hand, perceives Swinburne's attempt to rethink English lyric tradition as an important stage in English poetry's transition to modernism. The volume's final section is dedicated to Swinburne's personal and creative relationships with other contemporary writers. In "'Good Satan': The Unlikely Poetic Affinity of Swinburne and Christina Rossetti" (pp. 157-173), Dinah Roe adds another angle to Swinburne and Rossetti's strange yet intimate relationship by focusing on the manner in which they poetically influenced each other. Sarah Lyons's "Parleying with Robert Browning: Swinburne's Aestheticism, Blasphemy, and the Dramatic Monologue" (pp. 174-192) discusses Swinburne's manipulation of Browning's dramatic monologue conventions as a means of "pressing . . . [Swinburne's] own anti-Christian agenda" (p. 179). Sarah Parker explores Swinburne's influence on Amy Lowell and their shared appreciation of Sappho's poetry in "Whose Muse?: Sappho, Swinburne, and Amy Lowell" (pp. 193-212). And concluding the volume, Catherine Maxwell's "Atmosphere and Absorption...