“The World Which Seems to Lie Before Us Like a Land of Dreams”: Double Awareness and Pragmatism in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry
“The World Which Seems to Lie Before Us Like a Land of Dreams”: Double Awareness and Pragmatism in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry

Summary/Abstract: As compared to their Romantic counterparts, Victorian poets refused to make emotion and reverie the milestones of their poetic outlook. Instead, building on what the age’s great novelists had already achieved, they turned to reality and pragmatism in search of a new and distinct poetic voice. The popular Victorian bards, Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, dwelled on the key issues of their time and wrote for a society increasingly vulgarized by industrialization and materialism, while at the same time attempting to preserve their artistic integrity.

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