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Studies in Victorian Life and Literature A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES ROMANTIC IRONY IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE Clyde de L. Ryals Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 1990 by the Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ryals, Clyde de L., 1928 A world of possibilities : romantic irony in Victorian literature / Clyde de L. Ryals. p. cm. - (Studies in Victorian life and literature) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8142-0522-4 (alk. paper) 1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Romanticism—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Irony in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR468.R65R94 1990 820.9'18'09034—dc20 90-35593 CIP The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Printed in the U.S.A. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For HSR Superlative actors! how noble the play, how splendid your costume, how lofty your role! St. Hildegard of Bingen (trans. Barbara Newman) CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION A N IMAGE OF THE AGE 1 2 3 4 1 Carlyle's The French Revolution A "True Fiction'' 17 Vanity Fair Transcendental Buffoonery 34 Levity's Rainbow The Way of Browning's "Christmas-Eve" 48 The Chameleon Personality Arnold's Poetry 60 5 The "Mononymity" of Bleak House 76 6 "The Old Order Changeth" Idylls of the King 94 viii 7 Contents The Heracliteanism of Marius the Epicurean 114 AFTERWORD BEING TRUE AT THE VERGE 131 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 135 NOTES 137 INDEX 157 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Portions of this book have been previously published. Most of chapter 1 appeared in ELH (Winter 1987-88); parts of chapter 3 in Studies in Browning and His Circle (1986) and the Journal of Narrative Literature (Winter 1987); most of chapter 4 in Vic torian Poetry (Spring-Summer 1988); parts of chapter 6 in the Tennyson Research Bulletin (1990); and most of chapter 7 in Nineteenth-Century Literature (September 1988). I thank the edi tors of these journals for their kind permission to reprint this material. In addition, portions of the book were delivered as lectures: at West Virginia University (October 1985); the Conference on Narrative Poetics, Ohio State University (April 1986); the Univer sity of Miinster (May 1987); the Modern Language Association in New Orleans (December 1988); and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (May 1989). I am grateful to my hosts on these occasions. I should like especially to thank John Stasny of West Virginia University and Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador of the University of Miinster for their generous hospitality when 1 appeared at their universities. IX INTRODUCTION An Image of the Age After forty years of revolutions and revolutionary wars it had become apparent at the beginning of the Victorian period that the nineteenth century was to be characterized as a period of change. It was in fact the one subject on which even the most contentious persons could agree. Writing on "The Spirit of the Age" in 1831, John Stuart Mill described his as "an age of change," "the con viction [being] already not far from universal, that the times are pregnant with change.' Elaborating on Mill's observation in the last decade of the century, Walter Pater noted that "the entire modern theory" of change had become "a commonplace."1 In sum, the idea of change informed all vital thought of the Victorian age: f