In this article Monique Morgan argues for the relevance of Victorian poetry to the studies of the literature of other periods, and while doing this shows some ways it is related to Modernism. She points out how the distinction between form and content that the Modernist writers were so fond of (it was a prevalent modernist belief that content didn't matter anywhere near as much as form to the point where it was a common modernist belief that the form was the content). She mentions Bonnie Robinson's idea that "the conservative poetics of late-Victorian and early-Modernist women writers may belie their radical politics, offering an inversion of the radical poetics and conservative politics of their male Modernist counterparts." (Morgan takes this from Bonnie Robinson, "'Individable Incorporate': Poetic Trends in Women Writers, 1890-1918," VP 38, no.1 (Spring 2000): 1-14.) Morgan says one reason of Victorian poetry's importance is the way it played with form, and notes for an example the way Hopkins improvised with the sonnet. She also gives projects like this encouragement when she says, "If a greater number of critical projects engage in detailed and prolonged comparisons of Victorian poetry with poetry from other periods...then scholars will be unable to continue to ignore its importance.

     Wow. This review of Victorian Modernism (the book is by Jessica Feldman, the review by Christopher Lane) really points out the difficulties for trying to reconcile, to the point where one could be discouraged to even attempt it (making me thankful for Monique Morgan's article!). Lane tears Feldman's book apart, pointing out the extreme distaste many modernist writers had for Victorian authors. In mentioning a few examples Lane says Feldman neglects, “Ezra Pound's contempt for Algernon Charles Swinburne, W. B. Yeats's "frenzied hatred" of 1890s aestheticism, T. S. Eliot's eventual disdain for his "adolescent" infatuation with Romanticism and Pre- Raphaelitism, and T. E. Hulme's aversion to all such nineteenth-century antecedents.” (772) It would be interesting to do a detailed analysis of these author's writings and trace where their claimed distaste for Victorian writers surfaces as I have a feeling Victorian ideas are more present in their writing than the authors' claim it to be. I took Victorian Modernism out of the library and will look at it in writing my final paper, however when Lane writes that Feldman's book, “seems partial and incomplete,” (773) this leads me to read with very critical eyes.