A.C. Swinburne and the Singing Word

Focusing on Algernon Charles Swinburne's later writings, this collection makes a case for the seriousness and significance of the writer's mature work. Among the key features of the collection is the contextualizing of Swinburne's work in new contexts such as Victorian mythography, Victorian literary criticism, continental aestheticism, positivism, and empiricism. Taken together, the essays offer scholars a richer portrait of Swinburne's importance as a poet, critic, and fiction writer.

Yisrael Levin teaches English at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Contents: Introduction, Yisrael Levin; Knowledge and sense experience in Swinburne's late poetry, Stephanie Kuduk Weiner; 'Quivering web of living thought': conceptual networks in Swinburne's Songs of the Springtides, John A. Walsh; Solar erotica: Swinburne's myth of creation, Yisrael Levin; Swinburne and the North, Brian Burton; Swinburne's Shakespeare: the verbal whirlwind?, Nick Freeman; A Channel passage: Swinburne and France, Charlotte Ribeyrol; Swinburnes's friendships with women writers, Catherine Maxwell; Selecting Swinburne, Rikky Rooksby; Afterword, David G. Riede; Index.