Love, marriage, and sexuality in the life and poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough.
Item
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Title
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Love, marriage, and sexuality in the life and poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough.
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Identifier
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AAI9207086
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identifier
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9207086
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Creator
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Keller, Janice.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Michael Timko
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Biography
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Abstract
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The Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough is known primarily for his skeptical and satirical poems. However, a large part of his poetry, including all his long poems, are about love, marriage, and sexuality. Clough waged lifelong battles to solve the personal psychic conflicts caused by the inhibiting sexual mores of early nineteenth century England and to forge in his poetry a more liberal, humane sexual ethos than that of his society. This study attempts to show the interrelationships between Clough's life and his poetry on love, marriage, and sexuality.;Chapter 1 sketches Clough's youth as an early Victorian, especially his response to the era's notorious prudishness that stemmed from the Evangelical propriety which swept English society from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century.;Chapter 2 analyzes the development of Clough's early poems on love and sexuality, from his juvenilia, through the lyrics that show the erotic tensions of his life as an Oxford student and fellow, to the first, and most ebullient, long poem, which concerns love and marriage across class lines of a young Oxonian and a Scots country girl, a theme repeated in many of Clough's poems and one which was probably drawn from his life.;Chapter 3 primarily concerns Clough's two major long poems. In both a young intellectual is faced with the problems of entering the world. Claude, the hero of the first poem, Amours de Voyage, represents the poet in his ambivalence toward love and marriage, while the eponymous hero of Dipsychus, like Clough, is both fascinated and repelled by sex.;Chapter 4 examines Clough's impetuous choice of a fiancee and their courtship correspondence in which his desire for a wife and a home alternated with his fear of irrevocable, mistaken commitment, a fear which he frequently expressed in his poetry.;Chapter 5 interweaves the experiences of the end of Clough's short life, including his eight-year poetic silence, with discussion of his last long poem, in which his liberal approach to love and sexuality far transcends the restrictive mores of his era.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
