Isobel Armstrong:

51) Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poets and Politics.

London 1993

This comprehensive re-reading of Victorian poetry in terms of its political implications combines for the first time the familiar mainstream of the literary establishment with examples of radical working-class poetry. Through this approach, Isobel Armstrong paved the way for all following studies in this field. Linton is introduced as the author of Bob-Thin, a satirical and burlesque form of working-class poetry and as a poet, who had “developed a remarkable form of secular hymn.” In Armstrong’s discourse on the definition of manhood in Chartist poetry, he is distinguished as an “exemplary writer of great integrity,” who had invoked an image of manhood that enforced optimistic solidarity without a smack of “violent militarism and phallic power.”