1. The Victorian Era

2. Finding a representative poem difficult, because: Romantic/Victorian distinction not sharp long era--lots of poetry and it varied “representative” implies a unified entity, but the Victorian era was the one which called unity into question

3. Era of exposure to other ways of thinking: Railroads Age of Empire

4. Era of rapid change: Industrialization Political reform Beginnings of women’s movement Beginnings of religious doubt on wide scale Progress

5. So the representative poem… Could represent doubt and fragmentation directly, e.g. “Dover Beach” Could invoke issues of perspective and point of view in its form: dramatic monologue In comparison, then...