Search results for "Victorian poetry"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
"Man Jack the man is": An Analysis of Gerald Manley Hopkins' sonnet The Sheperd's Brow
2020
Although the sonnet The Shepherd’s Brow, written by G. M. Hopkins only a few months before his death, has been considered by Robert Bridges an unfinished work, critics have gradually tended to agree that it is one of the poet’s most refined and powerful poems, structurally and thematically. W. H. Gardner has read in it a “Swiftean cynicism”, while other more recent scholars have defined it “conflicted” (Mariani), “ironic and damned” (Feeney), and above all “cryptic” (Sobolev). Often studied as an ideal appendix to the so called “terrible sonnets”, by offering a close-reading of the sonnet this article argues that The Shepherd’s Brow is one of Hopkins’ most powerful poems, marking an importa…
"The wrathful sunset glared...": The Krakatoa Sunsets in Victorian Science and Art
2020
The eruption of Krakatoa on August 27, 1883 was an event both tragic and spectacular. Thousands of lives were lost; sea waves and atmospheric disturbances were detected around the globe. Billions of tons of volcanic ash were thrown into the atmosphere producing multi-coloured sunsets caused by the scattering of light by aerosol particles. The paper discusses the ways in which these so-called Krakatoa sunsets, which were experienced by most of the world, were reflected in Victorian scientific and artistic discourse. The accounts included in the section “Descriptions of the Unusual Twilight Glows in Various Parts of the World, in 1883–84” of the Royal Society report The Eruption of Krakatoa a…