This book considers why and how the heart became a vital image in Victorian poetry, and argues that the intense focus on heart imagery in many major Victorian poems highlights anxieties in this period about the ability of poetry to create affect. In the course of the nineteenth century, new medical investigations into the heart, along with the development of instruments such as the stethoscope, gave the pathological heart a strong presence in popular culture. As poets feared for their own hearts, their poetry embodied concerns about heartsickness in form as well as content. Concerns about the ... More

This book considers why and how the heart became a vital image in Victorian poetry, and argues that the intense focus on heart imagery in many major Victorian poems highlights anxieties in this period about the ability of poetry to create affect. In the course of the nineteenth century, new medical investigations into the heart, along with the development of instruments such as the stethoscope, gave the pathological heart a strong presence in popular culture. As poets feared for their own hearts, their poetry embodied concerns about heartsickness in form as well as content. Concerns about the heart's status and its actions fed into the broader discourses of religion, gender, and nationalism, as well as medicine. These discourses are examined through close readings of works by Arnold, Barrett Browning, Tennyson, and others.