|
|
Article: How all occasions do inform: "household matters" and domestic vignettes in George Meredith's Modern Love.
- Article from:
- Victorian Poetry
- Article date:
- September 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 West Virginia University Press, University of West Virginia. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
FOR ALMOST A CENTURY AND A HALF GEORGE MEREDITH'S MODERN LOVE HAS been recognized as a challengingly, troublingly modern poem. Successive generations found it contemporary and pertinent. In 1862 the poem irked and even scandalized reviewers for its disturbing tastelessness and for what seemed its vulgar, amoral undressing of marital relations. The young Swinburne, an avatar of the new and shocking, was rare among the poem's first reviewers for his admiring letter in the Spectator of that year. (1) Apprehension about the poem's indecency, however, quickly yielded to apprecitations of its art and then examinations of its richness in form, in style, in narration, and in ...