ENGL200B Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Algernon Charles Swinburne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Petrarchan Sonnet
Document Summary
Drug user, porn writer, user of brothels, and practitioner of s&m. Amazing at verse even conservative people were a fan of him. Liked dramatic monologues and wrote from the view of eccentric characters. Fell in love with his cousin (not a weird thing at the time) Comes from the petrarchan tradition (see below) Now we love having sex with zombies and vampires, but at the time this was weird. He is a cleric (member of the church) lower status than the woman. In this poem, swinburne is pretending to be writing a found poem that is translated (like. Most of the poem is about him remembering when she was alive. When she was living, she scorned him and she was in love with other men. He got pleasure from watching her with other men a masochistic voyeur. Leprosy at the time, thought to be an std given by god as a punishment of promiscuity.
