Tennyson

Abstract

own propensity for hoaxes and pseudonyms was tackled recently by Colton Valentine in “ ‘I Sappho’: A Case for Character in the Early Writings of Algernon Swinburne” [VP 59, no. 1 (2021): 23–47]). The volume White Stains, for instance, was presented as the work of one George Archibald Bishop, a fictitious figure who, having “degenerated into a raving erotomaniac,” died when his asylum burned down during the Commune in Paris (p. 782). The poems narrate Bishop’s “progression of diabolism” (Crowley’s phrase), upping the transgressive ante as the pseudonymous poet descends deeper into obsessions (p. 783). The dramatic pre sen ta tion of the poems, as well as Crowley’s tongueincheek defense of the volume as written “in utmost seriousness and all innocence,” recall Swinburne’s own canny apol o getics in Notes on Poems and Reviews (1866). Fi nally, two articles suggest the reach of Swinburne beyond the bounds of Victorian studies. In “ ‘Burnt to the Bone’ with Love, Damnation and Sin: Phaedra as the Swinburnian Femme Damnée (Armenian Folia Anglistika 17, no. 23 [2021]:124–149), Lilith Ayvazyan compares Swinburne’s “Phaedra” with classical and con temporary antecedents from Euripides to Marina Tsvetaeva. Ayvazyan contends that Swinburne and Tsvetaeva are novel in ignoring the theme of sin and focusing solely on Phaedra’s desire. And while my German is not good enough to say much more than this, I will note simply, by way of the article abstract, that Torsten Voß explores modes of authorial selfpresentation in Felix Dörmann, Maurice Rollinat, and Swinburne in “Zwischen Mythos, Rausch und Ennui: Die Künstlichkeit des Erotischen als Inszenierungsmodus von Autorschaft in der Lyrik Felix Dörmanns mit Seitenblicken auf Charles Algernon Swinburne und Maurice Rollinat” (Journal of Austrian Studies 54, no. 2 [2021]: 1–29). Treating Swinburne in comparative contexts is a relatively rare phenomenon and could surely sustain more inquiry.