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A Genealogy of the Verse Novel A Genealogy of the Verse Novel A Genealogy of the Verse Novel By Catherine Addison A Genealogy of the Verse Novel By Catherine Addison This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Catherine Addison All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7899-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7899-9 For John Hulcoop TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. x INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................ 12 GENRE CHAPTER TWO ........................................................................................... 36 EARLY VERSE NOVELS Origins: William Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida ................................... 36 Christopher Anstey: The New Bath Guide ........................................... 44 Anna Seward, Louisa ........................................................................... 49 George Crabbe’s Tales ......................................................................... 53 Byron’s “Beppo” and Don Juan .......................................................... 59 Thomas Moore, The Fudge Family Sagas .......................................... 72 Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin .................................................... 75 Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz ......................................................... 81 CHAPTER THREE ........................................................................................ 84 THE VICTORIAN PERIOD Blank Verse.......................................................................................... 89 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh .................................... 89 “Violet Fane,” Denzil Place ......................................................... 103 Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book .................................... 109 Thomas Woolner, Pygmalion, Charles MacKay, A Man’s Heart, Marguerite A. Power, Virginia’s Hand, Other Blank Verse Texts ....................................................................................... 123 Heroic Couplets ................................................................................. 130 Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Griselda .................................................. 130 William Allingham, Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland .................. 140 Sonnets ............................................................................................... 147 George Meredith, Modern Love ................................................... 147 Hexameter Verse Novels ................................................................... 153 Arthur Hugh Clough, The Bothie and Amours De Voyage ........... 153 Tetrameter Verse Novels ................................................................... 170 viii Table of Contents Conventry Patmore, The Angel in the House and The Victories of Love .................................................................................... 170 Herman Melville, Clarel .............................................................. 180 “Owen Meredith,” Lucile ............................................................. 192 Alphonso Alva Hopkins, Geraldine ............................................. 210 Edmund C. Nugent, Anderleigh Hall ........................................... 212 Manners Stephenson, Jason of the Golden Fleece ....................... 221 CHAPTER FOUR ........................................................................................ 227 THE EARLIER TWENTIETH CENTURY Free-Verse Novels ............................................................................. 230 Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology ................................. 230 May Sinclair, The Dark Night ...................................................... 239 David Jones, In Parenthesis ......................................................... 245 Peter Bowman, Beach Red ........................................................... 257 MacKinlay Kantor, Glory for Me ................................................. 264 Jazz Rhythm ....................................................................................... 273 Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party and The Set-Up ............ 273 Blank Verse........................................................................................ 285 Susan Miles, Lettice Delmer ........................................................ 285 Edgar Lee Masters, Domesday Book ............................................ 297 Mixed Forms ...................................................................................... 309 Philip Toynbee, Pantaloon and its Sequels .................................. 309 Christopher La Farge, Each to the Other and other texts ............. 314 Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body ................................ 321 William Rose Benét, Rip Tide ...................................................... 326 Zelda Varian Price, Take It to the Hills ........................................ 333 C. J. Dennis, The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke and Sequels ....... 336 Ottava Rima and Similar Stanzas ....................................................... 339 Gilbert Frankau, One of Us, One of Them and More of Us .......... 339 Eileen Hewitt, Donna Juana ........................................................ 348 CHAPTER FIVE .......................................................................................... 358 THE CONTEMPORARY AGE Free Verse .......................................................................................... 361 Classification and the Unclassifiable: 24 Hours, by Π. O. ........... 361 Short-Line and Short-to-Longer-Line Free Verse .............................. 362 Dorothy Porter, The Monkey’s Mask ............................................ 362 Diane Brown, 8 Stages of Grace, Ana Castillo, Watercolor Women Opaque Men, Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, Bernadine Evaristo, The Emperor’s Babe .............................. 368 A Genealogy of the Verse Novel ix Long-Line Free Verse Novels ............................................................ 375 Bernadine Evaristo, Lara, Les Murray, Fredy Neptune, W. S. Merwin, The Folding Cliffs .......................................... 377 Metrical Verse: Unrhymed Forms, Including Blank Verse ............... 382 Paul Hetherington, Blood and Old Belief ..................................... 382 David Mason, Ludlow .................................................................. 384 Terza Rima and Related Forms .......................................................... 387 Derek Walcott, Omeros ................................................................ 388 John Haynes, Letter to Patience, Glyn Maxwell, Time’s Fool, Kwame Dawes, Prophets, Ralph Thompson, View from Mount Diablo .......................................................................... 396 Ottava Rima (and Some Spenserian Stanzas) .................................... 401 Fred D’Aguiar, Bloodlines ........................................................... 403 Anthony Burgess, Byrne .............................................................. 406 Wayne Koestenbaum, Model Homes ........................................... 410 Alan Wearne, The Lovemakers .................................................... 414 Sonnets ............................................................................................... 416 Les Murray, The Boys Who Stole the Funeral .............................. 419 Marilyn Hacker, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons .... 424 Four-Beat Lines: The Onegin Stanza and Related Forms .................. 428 John Fuller, The Illusionists ......................................................... 429 Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate .................................................... 432 H. R. F. Keating, Jack the Lady-Killer ......................................... 441 Matt Rubinstein, Solstice and Equinox ......................................... 443 Mixed-Form Verse Novels ................................................................ 449 Alan Wearne, The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers ................ 449 New Forms ......................................................................................... 456 Brad Leithauser, Darlington’s Fall .............................................. 456 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................... 467 INDEX ....................................................................................................... 488 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges permission to adapt or reproduce material from the following articles published under her name: “Contemporary Verse Novels: An Explosion of Poetic Narrative,” Alternation 10.1 (2003): 307-326; “The Verse Novel as Genre: Contradiction or Hybrid?”, Style 43:4 (2009): 540-563; “The Verse Novel: A Challenge to Established Genres?”, English Studies in Africa 55.2 (2012): 85-101; “Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida: The First English Verse
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