• About
  • Policies
  • What is open access
  • Library
  • Contact
Advanced search
      View Item 
      •   BUIR Home
      • Scholarly Publications
      • Faculty of Humanities and Letters
      • Department of English Language and Literature
      • View Item
      •   BUIR Home
      • Scholarly Publications
      • Faculty of Humanities and Letters
      • Department of English Language and Literature
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Swinburne’s boyishness

      Thumbnail
      View / Download
      211.5 Kb
      Author(s)
      Selleri, Andrea
      Date
      2022-02-12
      Source Title
      Journal of Victorian Culture
      Print ISSN
      1355-5502
      Electronic ISSN
      1750-0133
      Publisher
      Oxford University Press
      Volume
      27
      Issue
      1
      Pages
      135 - 149
      Language
      English
      Type
      Article
      Item Usage Stats
      4
      views
      4
      downloads
      Abstract
      This article reconsiders the early critical reception of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s 1866 collection Poems and Ballads with a view to articulating the extent to which the critical hostility that famously greeted the book upon publication was mediated by the category of ‘boyishness’. I show that the complaint that the 29-year-old Swinburne wrote, and by implication thought and felt, too much like a boy and not enough like an adult man lay at the core of the critical onslaught and contributed to underpin critics’ various complaints of obscenity, blasphemy, bad taste and so on. After considering the nature of the connection between the boyish quality often associated with Swinburne as a person throughout his life and the poetical ‘boyishness’ critics perceived in his work, I propose a taxonomy of three main meanings of boyishness that emerge from the early critics’ attacks: boyishness as lack of virility, boyishness as lack of self-restraint, and boyishness as lack of intellectual maturity. By analysing these critical readings in the context of various medical, pedagogical and more broadly cultural discourses of the time, I make the case that Swinburne found himself cast as someone who presented precisely the characteristics of boyhood of which a functioning adult man was supposed to rid himself. The broader argument is that by giving close attention to age-based slurs, we can gain a more fine-grained account of mid-Victorian attitudes to childhood and maturity, and society’s self-image more generally.
      Keywords
      Swinburne
      Reception
      Criticism
      Boyishness
      Maturity
      Permalink
      http://hdl.handle.net/11693/111812
      Published Version (Please cite this version)
      https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac001
      Collections
      • Department of English Language and Literature 80
      Show full item record

      Browse

      All of BUIRCommunities & CollectionsTitlesAuthorsAdvisorsBy Issue DateKeywordsTypeDepartmentsCoursesThis CollectionTitlesAuthorsAdvisorsBy Issue DateKeywordsTypeDepartmentsCourses

      My Account

      Login

      Statistics

      View Usage StatisticsView Google Analytics Statistics

      Bilkent University

      If you have trouble accessing this page and need to request an alternate format, contact the site administrator. Phone: (312) 290 2976
      © Bilkent University - Library IT

      Contact Us | Send Feedback | Off-Campus Access | Admin | Privacy