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'This is a brilliantly conceived book, showing how Aestheticist lyrics, despite their frequent use of antiquated forms, actively engage with the concerns of modernity. In arguing that the rhetorical strategies adopted by these poems are not proto-Modernist but rather "post-Victorian" - self-consciously playing on earlier works, in the manner of postmodernism - Thain offers truly fresh insight, not only into this particular corpus of fin de siècle literature, but into the possibilities of the lyric genre itself.' Erik Gray, Columbia University The remaking of lyric poetry in Victorian modernity As cultural and philosophical shifts were challenging the fundamental generic identity of 'lyric', aestheticist poets seemed to turn insistently to forms from the past. Yet might those antique forms be understood in relation to the pressures of modernity? How might they have been used to reimagine lyric's presence in the modern world? This book argues that aestheticist poetry (c. 1860 to 1914) responds profoundly to the crisis of lyric's relevance to a rapidly modernising age, not in spite of these forms but through them. Setting its focal poetry within broader conceptual frames, and featuring innovative analysis of both recently rediscovered and canonical works, this study asks us to reimagine the relationship between poetry and modernity. Key Features - Challenges and transforms existing narratives of the modern formation of the 'lyric' genre through engagement with a body of work that larger-scale genre histories elide - Provides three fresh theoretical frames to examine the relationship between poetry and modernity - Offers innovative analysis of a range of literary figures such as Thomas Hardy, D. G. Rossetti, Alice Meynell, Arthur Symons, A. C. Swinburne and Ezra Pound Professor Marion Thain works in Liberal Studies and English at New York University. Her previous publications include The Lyric Poem: Formations and Transformations (2013); and 'Michael Field' Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Fin de Siècle (2007). Cover design: [EUP Logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-1566-8
About the author
Marion Thain is Professor of Culture and Technology at King's College London, and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She is Chair-Director of the Digital Futures Institute at King's, where she founded the Centre for Attention Studies (attentionstudies.org). She publishes particularly on the relationship between culture and technology (considering 'technology' in the broadest sense). Further details can be found at https: //www.marionthain.org/
Summary
This study explores lyric poetry's response to a crisis of relevance in Victorian Modernity, offering an analysis of literature usually elided by studies of the modern formation of the genre and uncovering previously unrecognized discourses within it.
