Brisman, Leslie. "Swinburne's Semiotics." GaR 31: 578-97.
Forbes, Jill. "Rediscovering Swinburne." EA 28: 457-65.
_____. "Two Flagellation Poems by Swinburne." N & Q 22: 443-5.
_____. "Why Did Swinburne Write Flagellation Poems?" 1837 to 1901: J of Loughborough Victorian Studies Group 2: 21-31.
Fricke, Douglas C. "The Idea of Love in Swinburne's 'The Sundew."' ELN 13: 194-2011
Hampshire, Gwen. "Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Second Series 1878." BC 24: 236-44.
Harrison, Antony H. "The Aesthetics of Androgyny in Swinburne's Early Poetry Tennessee Studies in Literature 23 (1978): 97-98.
________. "Eros and Thanatos in Swinburne's Poetry: An Introduction." JPRS 2, i: 22-35.
________. "Swinburne's Craft of Pure Expression." Victorian Newsletter 51: 16-20.
________. Swinburne's Medievalism: A Study in Victorian Love Poetry. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
Emphasizes Swinburne's versatility as a poet by looking at the softer, more idealistic side of his writing. Like Prendergast, Harrison focuses on Swinburne's treatment of love, claiming that "the poet in his medievalist works could fill out his philosophical vision that held Love --- whether erotic, fraternal, or spiritual — to be the presiding albeit fatal impulse in all human lives and the power ultimately governing all activity in the world." An interesting shift in scholarly focus from Swinburne's much-discussed sadomasochism and blasphemy. [KL]
________. "The Swinburnian Woman," Philological Quarterly 58 (1979).
Hyder, Clyde K. "Swinburne and Plautus: 'A Man of Three."' Victorian Poetry 15: 377.
LeBourgeois, John U. "Swinburne and Mazzini: The Origin of Swinburne's Imperialism?" Victorian Institute Journal 2: 41-4.
Lorsch, Susan E. "Algernon Charles Swinburne's 'Evening on the Broads': Unmeaning Landscape and the Language of Negation." Victorian Poetry 18: 91-6.
A semiotic analysis of "Evening on the Broads." Claims that "the very particular — and peculiar — style" of the poem "illustrates the process by which humanity attempts to commune and communicate with a post-Romantic nature emptied of meaning; and it demonstrates the ultimate impossibility of relating to this natural setting without falsifying it by infusing it with meaning." Like Ridenour and Prendergast, Lorsch looks at Swinburne's nature writing but considers it deliberately self-defeating; she points to Swinburne's use of a "language of negation" (which includes "words with negative suffixes") and the fact that "the viewer" in the poem "is practically invisible." [KL]
Louis, Margot K. Swinburne and His Gods: The Roots and Growth of an Agnostic Poetry. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990.
Devoted to "the subtlety and precision of Swinburne's religious polemics," briefly discussed by Thomas. Argues that Swinburne's rebellion against conventional religion "manifests itself most forcefully at the point at which the sacramental systems of nature, language, and the Church interconnect through the Eucharist." Like Ridenour, Louis examines how Swinburne attempts to relocate this point of connection as a merging of human time with eternity by other means than that of Christ. [KL]
McGann, Jerome J. Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
McGhee, Richard D. "'Swinburne Planteth, Hardy Watereth': Victorian Views of Pain and Pleasure in Victorian Sexuality." TSL 27: 83-107.
Morgan, Thais E. "Swinburne's Dramatic Monologues: Sex and Ideology." Victorian Poetry 22: 175-95.
Murfin, Ross C. Swinburne, Hardy, Lawrence, and the Burden of Belief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Prendergast, Anne-Marie. "'Time and Fruitful Hour': Pre-Raphaelite Sincerity in 'Atalanta in Calydon."' JPRS 51: 68-75.
A very earnest, basic treatment of the Pre-Raphaelite endowment of a mythological scene with immediate meaning. Argues that the boar hunt in the poem functions as "a metaphor for man's search for meaning during his mortal life" and that, "since Artemis is the goddess of chastity, the killing of the boar will symbolize a kind of truce attained with her, a sort of renewal in time made possible by the triumph and restoration of purity." Of the huntets, only Meleager "is immortalized in death as he appears to be reintegrated in nature"; only Meleager understands that "each figure's end is mixed with his beginning." Prendergast reads Meleager's merging with nature as his achievement of immortality. [KL]
Redford, Bruce. "'A God with the World Inwound': Swinburne's 'A Nympholept' and Classical Soticism." Victorians Institute Journal 7 (1978): 35-56.
Ridenour, George M. "Time and Eternity in Swinburne: Minute Particulars in Five Poems." ELH 45: 107-30.
Offers a meticulous if not too imaginative close reading of five poems: "The Last Oracle," "Ave atque Vale," "Memorial Verses on the Death of Theophile Gautier," "In Memory of John William Inchbold," and "On the Cliffs." Explores Swinburne's faith in poetic language and traces the construction of "poetic eternity in terms of minute particulars," which include "allusions, echoes, and analogies." Two of the poems examined here are elegies, but all of Ridenour's readings affirm the possibility of creating an immortality ot eternity by means of art instead of religion. [KL]
Redford, Bruce. "'A God with the World Inwound': Swinburne's 'A Nympholept' and Classical Soticism." Victorians Institute Journal 7 (1978): 35-56.
Riede, David G. "Swinburne's 'On the Cliffs': The Evolution of a Romantic Myth." Victorian Poetry 16: 189-203.
Sieburth, Richard. "Poetry and Obscenity: Baudelaire and Swinburne." CL 36: 343-53.
Staines, David. "Swinbutne's Arthurian World." SN 50: 53-70.
Thomas, Donald. Swinburne: The Poet in This World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
An interesting and accessible biography that describes Swinburne's life as "almost a model of one type of Victorian experience" and how this experience shaped his writing. Looks at the connections between Swinburne's time at Eton and Oxford, where he met Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite painters and discovered and admired the Marquis de Sade, and his subsequent fascination with bisexuality and sadomasochism. Thomas also discusses the death of Swinburne's father and Swinburne's concession thereafter, despite his Sadean leanings, "to the existence of a spirit after bodily death."
Wilson, Williams. "Algernon Agonistes: 'Thalassius,' Visionary Strength, and Swinburne's Critique of Arnold's 'Sweetness and Light."' Victorian Poetry l9: 381-95.
_____. "Behind the Veil Forbidden: Truth, Beauty, and Swinburne's Aesthetic Strain." Victorian Poetry 22: 427-37.
A lively writer, given to puns, Wilson describes Swinburne's "The Triumph of Time" as "the 'watershed' of Swinburne's career, where we see a seascape made over in the image of a distraught poet, a man deeply grieved by a stillborn love affair." Wilson considers such pathetic fallacy as "The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours, / Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam, Turning her smile to a fugitive pain" and argues that this kind of writing is Swinburne's way of establishing "the validity of the subjective imagination in aesthetic experience." Wilson also comments upon Swinburne's similarity to Baudelaire, noted by Thomas and Sieburth; he mentions the "Baudelairean correspondence between the subjective imagination and objective nature."
Last modified June 2000