An entertaining and enthralling introduction to the poetics of the Victorians and the Modernists, "Victorian and Modern Poetics" by Carol T. Christ is the type of book which, if you have an affinity for and interest in the poets discussed and ideas analyzed here, is impossible to put down.
Divided into five equally engaging chapters, this book discusses the Dramatic Monologue, the Mask, the Persona, the Picturesque and Modernist theories of the image, and Myth, History, and the Structure of the Long Poem. All though out this well-written wonderful book, the works and theories of the Victorian poets (Arnold, Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, Pater) are contrasted with those of the Modernists (Yeats, Eliot, and Pound) who, like spoiled children, trash-talked their elders for all sorts of perceived sins, namely didacticism and dependence on rhetorical strategies over the 'things-in-themselves.'
