Heart's Events

Dr Ball offers an analysis and evaluation of a number of Victorian long poems and groups of lyrics which trace the course of close personal relationships. Her argument is that whereas Romantic treatment of such material was limited the Victorian poets not only made this emotional territory their own but explored it with vigour variety and enterprise and great technical resource. This is apparent as Dr Ball shows whether the poets concern themselves with crises such as loss through death - In Memoriam Patmore's odes of bereavement - or breakdown - Modern Love Maud James Lee's Wife - or whether they portray the intricate flux of mutual attraction and courtship as in Amours de Voyage The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich and The Angel in the House. The Heart's Events brings out strongly the experimental vitality and range of Victorian poetry and in particular its sensitive imaginative response to the subtleties of psychological time and change in its records of the inner histories of love.