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A. C. Swinburne's “Hymn to Proserpine”: The Work Sheets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Peters
Robert Peters*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Abstract

Recently discovered work sheets for Swinburne's “Hymn to Proserpine” (1866) reveal that the central wave image, foreshadowing the later symbolists and imagists, was wrought by Swinburne with extreme care. Through a careful pruning and a suppression of the simile in favor of metaphor, Swinburne built this passage of eighteen lines so that effects accumulate, distilling his themes of power, fear, evil, and transcendent time with considerable symbolic force.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , October 1968 , pp. 1400 - 1406
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1. My chapter “Form,” The Crowns of Apollo: Swinburne's Principles of Literature and Art (Detroit, Mich., 1965), deals with this topic at length.

2. For an authoritative treatment of the impact of Swinburne's anapests on Hopkins' style see Elisabeth W. Schneider, “Sprung Rhythm: A Chapter in the Evolution of Nineteenth-Century Verse,” PMLA, LXXX (1965), 237–253.

3. See my chapter “Passion and Tact: Creative Tension,” The Crowns of Apollo, for a discussion of Swinburne's use of the term.