Romantic Poetry and the TV Series Form: The Rhyme of John Logan’s Penny Dreadful

Abstract

The creator of the TV series Penny Dreadful John Logan has stated that he drew inspiration for the first three seasons (2014–16) from English Romantic poetry. Characters in the series read and recite Blake, Clare, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth; comment on the nature of poetry; and make emotional connections through poetic affinities. Simultaneously, the structure of the series is gradually revealed to the audience as a pattern of doublings and couplings, of mirrors and parallels—all of which can be associated with the poetic device of rhyme. Rhyming shapes the sensory and cognitive experiences of the audience of the series; it also reflects the order of the diegetic universe, be it a freakish correspondence of incongruous things or God’s plan. Since these aesthetic choices seem to be part of the creator’s highly self-conscious design, the series becomes an adaptation of Romantic poetry, not only directly using the historical Romantic texts, but re-enacting in its organization the epistemological practice that rhyme is for English poetry.