Augusta Webster and The Social History of Myth

Abstract

The major Victorian poets were plagued by a seemingly irresolvable conflict between the private nature of their work and the urgency of their public obligations. Matthew Arnold famously gave up the self-indulgent, intellectual play of poetry writing to answer his society's call for a sobering critical voice. Alfred Tennyson, after retreating for nearly ten years in mourning for A.H. Hallam, returned to his public and became their poet laureate but remained haunted by perceived criticism of his indulgence in "private sorrow's barren song/When more and more the people throng/The chairs and thrones of civil power" (Tennyson 48). Even Robert Browning, who built his poetic career on the exposure of unspeakable intimacies, kept a safe ironic distance between his own sentiments and the psychological tumult of his dramatic personas. It would not be far-fetched to venture that the Victorian poetic canon contorts itself around a struggle between the conviction of poetry's interiority and the increasing demand for the poet's service to society.The expansion of the canon to include women writers, however, has offered an alternate perspective on the Victorian literary scene-one that views social change and upheaval not as disruptions to a serene, versifying imagination but as catalysts for and essential elements of poetic production. The works of Letitia