ISOLATION AND COMMUNITY: THE THEME AND FORM OF WILLIAM MORRIS' POETRY AND PROSE Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Balch, Dennis Robert, 1949- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 09/10/2021 07:25:50 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289550 INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 77-18,575 BALCH, Dennis Robert, 1949- ISOLATION AND COMMUNITY: THE THEME AND FORM OF WILLIAM MORRIS'. POETRY AND PROSE. The University of Arizona, Ph.D., 1977 Literature, English Xerox University Microfilms , Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 © 1977 DENNIS ROBERT BALCH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ISOLATION AND COMMUNITY: THE THEME AND FORM OF WILLIAM MORRIS' POETRY AND PROSE by Dennis Robert Balch A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 7 Copyright 1977 Dennis Robert Balch TIIE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Dennis Robert Balch entitled Isolation and Community: The Theme and Form of William Morris' Poetry and Prose be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ,( .. I CI. / y/ 9 J *7 Dissertation Director Date After inspection of the final copy of the dissertation, the following members of the Final Examination Committee concur in its approval and recommend its acceptance: nJ( fc 0 j> "fTVcLfX I; 17 7 7 ^ (^/ / 9 v 'Ac£(Ul \lic jUtcS /7 J y This approval and acceptance is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense of this dissertation at the final oral examination. The inclusion of this sheet bound into the library copy of the dissertation is evidence of satisfactory performance at the final examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee- Professors Irvman, Ketcham, and Aiken—for providing the meticulous, uncompromising criticism and generous encouragement that are the foundations of humane and responsible scholarship. The discussion of "The Defence of Guenevere" and "King Arthur's Tomb" in Chapter 3 is reprinted, with slight alteration, by permission of the editors of Victorian Poetry; this material originally appeared as "Guenevere's Fidelity to Arthur in 'The Defence of Guenevere' and 'King Arthur's Tomb,'" VP 13, Nos. 3-4 (1975), 61-70. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT vi 1. INTRODUCTION 1 PART I. FABLES OF ISOLATION 10 2. EARLY PROSE TALES 11 "The Story of the Unknown Church" 11 "Lindenborg Pool" 21 "A Dream" 30 "Frank's Sealed Letter" 38 3. THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE AND OTHER POEMS ... 47 "The Defence of Guenevere": Arthurian Poems 48 "Sir Peter Harpdon's End": Froissartian Poems .... 75 "Golden Wings": Imaginative Poems 96 4. THE EARTHLY PARADISE 110 The "Apology," the Month Lyrics, "L'Envoi": The Idle Singer-Dreamer Frame 113 The "Prologue," "Epilogue," and Connecting Verses: The Second Stage of the Frame 134 The Tales: Endless Perspectives of the Self 156 PART H. FABLES OF COMMUNITY 194 5. LOVE IS ENOUGH 195 Pharamond the Freed: A Morality 201 Love and the Music: Critical Voices 211 The Spectators: Isolation and Community 231 iv V TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued Page 6. LATE PROSE ROMANCES 244 Socialist Dream: Physical Life and Fellowship 259 Germanic "History": The Self and the Center 273 Fantastic Romance: An Expanding Pattern 291 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 ABSTRACT Persistent charges of "escapism" notwithstanding, William Morris' literary work is rich in its treatment of a key nineteenth-century problem— the sense of isolation and time-oppression effected by the transitional quality of the Victorian era. Morris advances from an early portrayal of isolation and disrupted community to a later vision of healthy interplay between indi­ vidual and society. The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine tales, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, and The Earthly Paradise explore futile personal strategies for confronting isolated, time-bound experience; the late prose romances present a mature communal solution that both accommodates change and provides a means of resisting its adverse effects. Love Is Enough is a pivotal work in Morris' study of isolation and community, for it looks back to the limited personal strategies of the early works even as it looks forward to the more comprehensive communal strategy of the late work. This thematic development is accompanied by formal development. Dream and dramatic monologue are the characteristic forms of the early works, whose chief interest is to explore psychological complications. With Love Is Enough the dominance of introspective forms is left behind: a complex quali­ fying structure envelops Pharamond's dream experience. Two of the late vi vii romances use a dream frame, but as a vehicle for presenting social vision rather than as a means of exploring psychological concerns; the other late romances employ an objective third-person narrator to describe communal struggles for survival. Both thematically and formally, then, Morris' fables of isolation give way to fables of community in a continuous pattern of development, addressing problems deeply embedded in the Victorian consciousness. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION William Morris, it seems, was a rather isolated figure in many respects. J. W. Mackail cites a Marlborough classmate who remembered Morris as "fond of mooning and talking to himself, and considered a little mad by the other boys.1,1 E. P. Thompson and Philip Henderson both characterize the young Morris as rather solitary. 2 Jack Lindsay tells of "crushing periods of exclusion, loneliness" in Morris' childhood and reports that "from early days people noted that Morris seemed inturned . oblivious of persons around and unconcerned with what was regarded as the normal conventions of O intercourse." Says Mackail, "in the ordinary concerns of life he was strangely incurious of individuals"; he moved among his fellows "as in a dream, isolated, self-centred, almost empty of love or hatred"; "his most intimate friend," presumably Burne-Jones, once said, "He lives absolutely without the need of man or woman. He is really a sort of Viking, set down ^The Life of William Morris (London: Longmans, 1899; rpt. 1907). 2William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955), p. 18; "Introduction," The Letters of William Morris to His Family and Friends, ed. Philip Henderson (London: Longmans, 1950), p. xxvii. 3 William Morris: His Life and Work (London: Constable, 1975), pp. 14-16. 1 2 here, and making art because there is nothing else to do" (Life II, 93, 349-50). These impressions of Morris' withdrawn personality are bolstered by May Morris' "Introductions" to The Collected Works, in which she speaks of an "element of solitariness in our family life," noting her father's "solitary visits to Kelmscott," his slipping away for "a few days' stay of solitary work and rest."4 Generally May regarded such stays as beneficial and pleasant for her father, but on at least one occasion she realized that the solitude wore heavily on him, however much he may have needed it.