1. associated with intellectual production; the need for objectivity, standard of balance and precision (Robert Browning)
2. idealistic, spontaneous; direct continuation of romanticism; the cult of beauty; sympathy with emotions (lord Alfred Tennyson)
Victorian poetry:
- – nostalgic sentiments for the Middle Ages
- – religious scepticism
- – concerned with the search of identity, meaning of life
- – respect for romantics
- – the duty of the poet is to present the world around him and not his own soul (Restoration period)
- – poetry is deliberately didactic
- – one of the distinctive poetic forms is the dramatic monologue (origins are perhaps in Elizabethan drama)