Darwin's Bards

John Holmes is Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Late Victorian Sonnet-Sequence: Sexuality, Belief and the Self (Ashgate, 2005) and the editor of Science in Modern Poetry: New Directions (Liverpool University Press, 2012).

Darwin's Bards affords subtle, precise, sharp-eyed readings of verse by such well-known Victorian poets as Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Swinburne and Hardy, as well as more recent poems by the likes of Ted Hughes, Philip Appleman and Thom Gunn. Each of these poets, Holmes argues, grapples with the fundamental, largely unchanging challenges posed by Darwinian evolution, with the book's chapters each focusing on topics including theology, death and immortality, humanity's cosmic insignificance and relationship with other animals, and sex and reproduction… the detailed analysis of verse that deals with these issues often yields fresh insights that will be of interest to more historically minded critics.

• AcknowledgementsPreface 1. Poetry in the Age of DarwinScience, poetry and literary criticismWhose ‘Darwinism’? The Darwinian tradition in modern poetryPoetry and Darwinism in practice: Three poems by Edwin Morgan 2. Poetry and the ‘Non-Darwinian Revolution’Non-Darwinian evolution in late Victorian poetryPseudo-Darwinism and bad faith: A. C., Swinburne and Mathilde BlindReading A Reading of Earth: George Meredith’s later poetryDoubting progress: Science and evolution in Tennyson’s last poems 3. God: Darwinism, Christianity and theologyHappenstance or design? Two sonnetsNatural theology: Robert Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ God after Darwin: Three contemporary American poets and the Book of Job 4. Death: Darwinism, death and immortality‘In the Woods;: George MeredithDeath and dying: Robinson JeffersLove and loss: Thomas Hardy 5. Humanity’s Place in Nature‘The exact centre’, or just another African ape? ‘An idiot on a crumbling throne’: The cosmic perspective‘Earths catastrophe’: The planetary perspective‘All we’ve got’: The human perspective 6. Humans and Other AnimalsMore than kin and less than kindAt ‘the master-fulcrum of violence’: Hawks and falcons‘A diminished thing’: Songbirds and birdsong‘Someone else additional to him’: Deer in modern poetry 7. Love and SexDarwinism and sexA Darwinian sex comedy: Constance Haden’s ‘Evolutional Erotics’The Darwinian love sonnet: George Meredith and Edna St Vincent MillayMetamorphosis: Thom Gunn and the human animal 8. On BalanceFor better or for worse‘The just proportion of good to ill’: Weighing up evolutionDisenchantment and re-enchantment: The power of paradoxDarwin’s pagans: Meredith’s ‘Ode3’ and Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’Conclusion BibliographyIndexPoems in Darwin’s Bards:A. R. Ammons: ‘Questionable Procedures’Philip Appleman: ‘How Evolution Came to Indiana’, ‘Waldorf-Astoria Euphoria’D. M. Black: ‘Kew Gardens’Mathilde Blind: The Ascent of Man [extracts] Robert Browning: ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ [extracts] William Canton: ‘The Latter Law’ [sonnet from a sequence]Stephen Crane: ‘A man said to the universe’Richard Eberhart: ‘Sea-Hawk’Robert Frost: ‘Design’, ‘The Oven Bird’, ‘The Most of It’, ‘Our Hold on the Planet’ Thom Gunn: ‘Adultery’, ‘The Garden of the Gods’Thomas Hardy: ‘Hap’, ‘Your Last Drive’, ‘Rain on a Grave’, ‘At Castle Boterel’, ‘An August Midnight’, ‘The Darkling Thrush’, ‘Shelley’s Skylark’, ‘The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House’, ‘To Outer Nature’, ‘On a Fine Morning’Robinson Jeffers: ‘Vulture’, Cawdor [extract], ‘Rock and Hawk’George Meredith: ‘The Woods of Westermain’ [opening lyric], ‘In the Woods’ [8 lyrics out of a sequence of 9], ‘The Lark Ascending’ [extracts], Modern Love [3 sonnets from a sequence], ‘Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn’ [extracts]Edna St Vincent Millay: ‘The Fawn’, ‘I shall forget you presently, my dear’, Fatal Interview [2 sonnets from a sequence]Edwin Morgan: ‘Eohippus’, ‘The Archaeopteryx’s Song’, ‘Trilobites’Lewis Morris: ‘Ode of Creation’ [extract]Constance Naden: ‘Natural Selection’Agnes Mary Robinson: ‘Darwinism’Pattiann Rogers: ‘Against the Ethereal’, ‘The Possible Suffering of a God During Creation’, ‘Geocentric’Neil Rollinson: ‘My Father Shaving Charles Darwin’John Addington Symonds: ‘An Old Gordian Knot’ [sonnet from a sequence]Alfred Tennyson: ‘Flower in the Crannied Wall’, ‘By an Evolutionist’, ‘The Dawn’, ‘The Making of Man’, ‘Frater Ave atque Vale’, ‘Lucretius’ [extracts]