ABSTRACT
Like other Victorian poets, Tennyson, Barrett Browning, Clough, and Browning were intensely aware of the vatic claims for poetry made by Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, and, especially in the major long poems, they implied that they were offering their readers poetic narratives that explored universal themes of human nature. Tennyson, though he acknowledged a 'parabolic drift' in Idylls, was careful not to imply a historical continuity between the 'order' of King Arthur and that of Victorian Britain. Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh was set in the historical present, but Aurora's poetic insights into the relationships among the individual, society, and nature, and, especially, the apocalyptic vision at the conclusion of the poem also represents engagement with universal themes. Clough's somewhat comic questioning of nationalism and chivalric idealism offers a striking contrast to Tennyson in terms of point of view and literary genre but in its own way powerfully questions conventional concepts of masculinity.
