Science, Language, and Reform in Victorian Poetry

Barrow's timely book examines the link between Victorian poetry, the study of language, and political reform, recovering unacknowledged links between poetry, philology, and political culture, and contributing to recent movements in literary studies that combine historicist and formalist approaches.

Barbara Barrow is Assistant Professor of English at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Her journal articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Journal of Victorian Culture, Victorian Poetry, Victorian Periodicals Review, Nineteenth Century Contexts, and Victoriographies. In 2016, she was a Visiting Scholar at Baylor University's Armstrong Browning Library.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Language, Poetry, and Radical Reform in Victorian Britain 1. "No Perfect Code": Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Political Poetics and Women's Language 2. "And talks to his own self, howe'er he please": Robert Browning's Anti-Social Speech and Mid-Victorian Reform 3. The "Yelp of the Beast": Alfred Tennyson's Animal Language, Victorian Empire, and the End of Politics 4. To "Obliterate His Local Colour": Thomas Hardy's "Provincial" Poetry and the Reform Act of 1884 Conclusion Bibliography Index