The growth, popularity, and decline of the so-called "Spasmodic School" represents a chronologically brief phenomenon in Victorian poetics. Yet between 1850 and 1860, Spasmodic works affected virtually every serious discussion of Victorian poetics, and influenced (often disadvantageously) periodical reviewers' estimates of Tennyson and Browning. Even Arnold's 1853 Preface has been identified as a response to Spasmodic theories and practices. The history of the Spasmodics has largely been inscribed by the winners in the cultural debate surrounding that group of poets. The dissertation, therefore, rejects that simplified post-Arnoldian position, and examines the Spasmodic controversy as a complex discourse exposing the crucial ideological concerns of early Victorian culture. Without the disdain coloring most modern appraisals, it attempts to place the Spasmodics in the cultural setting they share with melodrama, the penny dreadfuls, and the craze for working-class poetry. Attention is also given to the critical debate fueled by the Spasmodic phenomenon, particularly concerning an idea that captivated the reading middle class: the revival of the Romantic notion that a priestly poet/prophet or vates would appear to lead their age both morally and artistically. The first two chapters are given to contextualizing the movement on these two fronts, therefore, while the next three are devoted to analyzing the works of the Spasmodic poets Bailey, Marston, Dobell, Smith, and Bigg. The final two sections attempt to delineate the effects of the Spasmodic debacle, spearheaded by the parody Firmilian, on later Victorian productions both major and minor as well as on the formation of the Victorian canon. The Spasmodic poets, young and inexperienced as they were, can above all be seen as victims of critical badinage between Arnoldian and neo-Romantic factions; they may be counted among the first excisions from this "canon" as we know it today. The longing for the vates is not found again until the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and in sometimes parodic form among its declension, Aestheticism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8927 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Paige, Lori Ann |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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