ABSTRACT
In the quixotic universe of Richard Feverel the sonnet emerges virtually intact from the flames licking its edges and the water threatening to obliterate its ink. Barely three years after the novel was published, the 50 poems of Meredith's Modern Love ravaged the perfect little world of the sonnet as no sequence had done before. This chapter does not so much present a thematic study of Modern Love itself as a close reading of its turbulent reception history, during which the poem evolved from sequence of 'sonnets' to 'novel in verse' and back. Meredith's awareness of the delicacy of contemporary poetic taste also shimmers through in the figure of Adrian Harley, the 'wise youth' from Richard Feverel who is sometimes pushed forward as the most likely candidate for acting as Meredith's 'spokesman' and 'assistant in pointing up the comedy' in the novel.
