Swinburne's The Tale of Balen: An Overview

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Biographical Materials

• Biographical Essay
• Other Works

Literary Relations

• Critical reception: high praise by early critics
• Tragic vision compared to that of Arnold and Hardy
• Chaucer
• Aesthetes and Decadents
• Victorianism

Religion and Philosophy

• Combines medieval romance with Greek tragic view of the human condition

Social and Political Contexts

• Victorian Social and Political History: An Overview
• Science and Technology

Theme and Technique

• Themes
  • Evil
  • Greek conception of the tragic human condition
• Characterization
• Imagery, Symbolism, and Motifs
  • Nature imagery
• Genre, Style, and Mode
  • deceptively unsophisticated stanzas
  • Swinburne's theory and use of the ballad form

Bibliography

• Harrison's recommended readings
• Chapter in Harrison, Swinburne's Medievalism

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Victorian
Web

Authors

A.C.
Swinburne

Works

Last modified June 2000