Affecting authenticity: Sonnets from the Portuguese and Modern Love

The mid-century revival of interest in the ability of the amatory sonnet sequence to represent or stage authentic experience was in both these works historically self conscious, as indeed much Victorian sonnet work was. After all, in a modern, technological age, when many poets were writing longer and looser forms, why would anyone choose to write sonnets? For these poets, in these works, one answer is that the authenticity effect created in the sonnet sequence offered a vantage point from which to scrutinize the romantic ideals of their own modern moment.

NOTES

1On the history of the early Victorian sonnet, see Going, Scanty; Golden, "Victorian"; and Sanderlin, "Bibliography" and "Influence."

2 See, for example, Mermin's "Female Poet," Reynolds, Stephenson 69-89, and Stone 1-48.

1 See Comstock, Fletcher, Mermin's "Poetry as Fiction," and Reader.

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