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Ernest Dowson : the Language of Poetry at the Victorian Fin De Siecle

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Ernest Dowson : the Language of Poetry at the Victorian Fin De Siecle This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Dowson, Caroline Heather Title: Ernest Dowson : the language of poetry at the Victorian Fin de Siecle. General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. Ernest Dowson: The Language of Poetry at the Victorian Fin de Siècle by Caroline Heather Dowson A thesis submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. in the Faculty of Arts. Department of English. January 1998. ABSTRACT University of Bristol Caroline Heather Dowson Ernest Dowson: The Language of Poetry at the Victorian Fin de Siècle Ph.D., January 1998 This thesis is a study of certain aspects, principally linguistic, of the work of Ernest Christopher Dowson (1867-1900) which have received little or no attention in the critical literature so far published in English (though a major general study of Dowson has recently been published in French). These aspects include an examination of the degree to which the work of Walter Pater and John Henry Newman, claimed by Dowson himself as major influences upon him, had an impact upon his attitudes and literary style; the relationship of his poetry to the voice and to the body (these seen both in reality and as literary constructs); Dowson's informal written style as displayed in his correspondence; and the formal, literary English of his poetry and prose translations from French. In order to establish a context for this research, the study begins with a biographical reassessment. It concludes with an examination of the influence of Dowson's writing on twentieth-century literature and culture. It emerges that, though he has not generally been considered a major poet, Dowson's diversity and richness in his use of language plays a significant role in bridging the gap between the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Before I began I had no inward feel of being able to finish. John Keats (on reception of the 1817 Poems). My thanks are firstly due to my father without whom my research would not have been possible. I am indebted to him for (almost) managing to suspend his dismay when I failed, for a long time, to produce any tangible results of my labours. I am grateful to Rowena Fowler who not only provided me with expert supervision, but also gave me her friendship. I would also like to thank Helen Small whose encouragement and expertise were invaluable. John Gough receives my utmost gratitude for (speedily) reading and commenting on drafts at critical points and for large amounts of proof-reading. I am further indebted to him for his helpful suggestions and general encouragement, particularly in the fmal stages. My thanks also go to Graham Dowson, to Mr R. A. Coon, to Nick Freeman (for enormous amounts of photocopying)' to the late Desmond Flower, and to Rob Dimbleby. My fmal acknowledgement must be to Ernest Christopher Dowson. bCO 5 j This dissertation presents research carried out at the University of Bristol from October 1993 to December 1997. All work is my own except where otherwise acknowledged. The views expressed in this dissertation are my own and do not represent those of the University of Bristol. Signed Ci,g-v_, Department of English University of Bristol Date It18 A Note on Jean-Jacques Charclin's Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) et la Crise Fin de Siècle Anglaise. As yet, there is still no defmitive study of Ernest Dowson in the English language. However, Jean-Jacques Chardin's Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) et Ia Crise Fin de Siècle Anglaise was published at an advanced stage in the preparation of my thesis. He has necessarily touched upon many of the same issues as I have in the study of Dowson's poetry and prose. Chardin is scrupulous in documenting alternative manuscript sources and his book contains many useful readings. However, he approaches Dowson's work from a French critical background, while I have concentrated on recent Anglo-American developments in Victorian poetry. I have indicated the fundamental divergences between Chardin's work and my own, but on the whole, the two studies are complementary. Table of Contents • 1. 'Why are these strange souls born everywhere today?" 1 2. Ernest Dowson: "a demoralised Keats?" 20 3. Stylistic Influences 35 4. Dowson and the voice 67 5. Dowson and the body 98 6. Correspondence 116 7. Dowson as translator 133 8. Dowson in the Twentieth Century 159 Bibliography 189 Appendix 1 220 Chapter 1 Why are these strange souls born everywhere today?' Ernest Christopher Dowson was born on 2 August 1867 at "The Grove", Belmont Hill, Lee, in Kent. His mother Annie was barely twenty at the time; a young woman of Scottish descent whose maiden name was Swan. His father, Alfred, was the nephew of Alfred Dommett, the "Waring" of Browning's poem and later Prime Minister of New Zealand. At the time of Ernest's birth his parents were reasonably prosperous and in good health, but within a short time his father's health began to deteriorate. His mother had always been of a delicate constitution, and the young Ernest accompanied his parents abroad in their quest for sunnier climes. Alfred Dowson had strong literary interests, and he was friendly with Robert Browning. In 1873, on the French Riviera, the Dowsons met Andrew Lang and Sidney Colvin briefly and spent some time with Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 with whom Alfred Dowson had much in common. Ernest was described by his uncle as "a good looking, rather shy boy of 14, studious, thoughtful and of a serious disposition".3 But even by the time his brother Rowland Corbett was born, eight years after Ernest, both the health and the income of the family were deteriorating. Bridge Dock, 4 the dry dock owned by the family at W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies: Me,nories and Reflections (1955; London: Bracken Books, 1995) 315. Henceforth Autobiographies. 2 Desmond Rower and Henry Mans quote from The Stevenson Library of Edwin J. Beinecke that "I have made myself indispensible to the Dowsons' little boy ... I have been fooling about with him all afternoon, playing dominoes ... and carrying him on my back a little." Lewis Swan, in a letter to his daughter Madeleine, quoted in Mark Longaker, Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945) 17. Henceforth Longaker. A picture of Blackpool Dock, undoubtedly based on Bridge Dock, is given in the opening pages of Dowson and Moore's collaborative novel, A Comedy of Masks (1893: London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1977) 1-2: Many years ago, in the days ... of wooden ships, it had no doubt been a flourishing ship- yard ... But as time went on ... and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made Thames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased to be of commercial importance. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest, and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a Limehouse, was frequently leased out, but from time to time Alfred Dowson was obliged to supervise affairs there. In the mid eighteen-seventies there were few ships in need of repair at Bridge Dock. Despite the family's financial difficulties, the trips abroad continued during Ernest's childhood, which he was later to describe to Victor Plarr as "pagan", and it was from these that he developed his taste for French life and literature. He received some tuition from an Italian priest for a short time, and whilst his schooling was erratic it was sufficient to admit him to Queen's College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term 1886. His father had entered him for the Jodrell Scholarship, but Dowson was unsuccessful and his father was obliged to fund his studies. One of his first acquaintances at Queen's was Arthur Moore, son of the portrait painter John C. Moore and nephew of the Royal Academician Henry Moore. Moore was later to become Dowson's collaborator on several novels. Dowson began his literary career shortly after his arrival at Oxford, for in November 1886 his first poem was published in The London Society. When it was collected by Desmond Flower in 1934, "Sonnet of a Little Girl" became number four in Dowson's sonnet sequence. It was also at Queen's that he met Sam Smith and W. R. Thomas -- known familiarly as "The Rabbit" or "Le Lapin" -- and that he established his relationship with Lionel Johnson.
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