Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:05:42.055Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.