A poem without an author
Kistler, Jordan (2016) A poem without an author. Victorian Literature and Culture, 44 (4). pp. 875-886. ISSN 1470-1553 (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150316000255)
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Abstract
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams…” These lines begin an “Ode” which has permeated culture throughout the last hundred years. The “Ode” was written in 1873 by Arthur W.E. O’Shaughnessy, and yet the name O’Shaughnessy brings little recognition today, even from scholars of the Victorian period. In this article, I will explore this phenomenon to demonstrate that circumstances occurring in the twentieth century severed the poem from its author, allowing the Ode to gain cultural traction at the same time as O’Shaughnessy’s poetic reputation languished. A consideration of the historical context of the poem, alongside its formal and thematic elements, demonstrates how the poem survived and promulgated despite the loss of O’Shaughnessy from the canon of Victorian poets.
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Item type: Article ID code: 69892 Dates: DateEvent31 December 2016Published4 November 2016Published Online30 May 2016AcceptedSubjects: Language and Literature > English literature Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Humanities > English Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 20 Sep 2019 14:31 Last modified: 12 Sep 2024 00:52 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/69892