‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’ : The Philosophy and Psychology of George Meredith’s Poetry

Abstract

The aim of this thesis on the Victorian poet/novelist George Meredith is to analyse the philosophical and psychological aspects of some of his poetry in relation to his reputation as a ‘difficult’ author. The study attempts to create a working definition of poetic difficulty by referring to George Steiner’s influential work in this regard, while also discussing some of the limitations of Steiner’s theory. A consideration of Rita Felski’s examination of critique in the field of literary studies is used to frame the debate around formalist versus ideological criticism and to introduce the conciliatory and reparative approach aimed at in this study, which, though mostly focusing on formalist close readings, also acknowledges the importance of context. The introduction includes a discussion of Meredith’s reputation as a difficult author, and argues that this is one of the main reasons for his critical and popular neglect, with his poetry being seen as particularly obscure. In the first chapter I look at Meredith’s response to the mythological past, elements of which are evident throughout his writing. I suggest that a lack of familiarity with Meredith’s sources can lead to misreadings of his poems, and look at two longer narrative poems, ‘Cassandra’ and ‘The Day of the Daughter of Hades’, to illustrate these claims. The second chapter focuses on Meredith’s Modern Love sequence, and includes detailed analyses of a large selection of the sequence’s 16-line sonnets to show how Meredith makes use of indeterminate narration and other ambiguities to create a complex depiction of mid-Victorian married life. The last chapter is concerned with Meredith’s philosophy of nature, an aspect of his thought which received a great deal of critical attention in the early and mid-twentieth century, though not as much in terms of Meredith’s obscurity. I provide a detailed close reading of his long poem ‘Earth and Man’ to illustrate some of the philosophical underpinnings of his poetry, while also suggesting that his was not a rigorous or fully thought-through system, but rather a lyrical exploration of the implications of evolutionary theory for nature-poetry. I conclude my study by considering how the Modernists T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound responded to the troubling question of poetic influence from their Victorian predecessors. By referring to Harold Bloom’s ‘anxiety of influence’, I suggest how Meredith’s difficult legacy — and legacy of difficulty — continues to reverberate even in the work of poets who attempted to reject Meredith and his Victorian contemporaries.