Summary: | Victorian Verse: The Poetics of Everyday Life casts new light on nineteenth-century poetry by examining its popular verse forms and their surrounding social and media landscape. The volume offers insight into two central concepts of both the Victorian era and our ownstatus and tasteand how cultural hierarchies then and now were constructed and broken. By recovering the lost diversity of Victorian verse, this collection maps the breadth of Victorian writing and reading practices, illustrating how seemingly minor verse genres actually performed crucial social functions for Victorians, in education, leisure practices, the cultural production of class, and the formation of individual and communal identities. In addition to exploring lesser-known and even anonymous versifiers, the essays consider how major Victorian poets were also committed to writing and reading minor verse. Lee Behlman is Associate Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Montclair State University. Olivia Loksing Moy is Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York, Lehman College.
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