This book is a study of nineteenth-century poems that remember, yearn
for, fixate on, and forget the past. Reflecting the current critical
drive to reconcile formalist and historicist approaches to literature,
it uses close readings to trace the complex interactions between memory
as a theme and the (often-memorable) formal traits - such as brevity,
stanzaic structure, and sonic repetition - that appear in the lyrics
examined. This book considers the interwoven nature of remembering and
forgetting in the work of four Victorian poets. It uses this theme to
shed new light on the relationship between lyric and narrative, on the
connections between gender and genre, and on the way in which Victorians
represented and commemorated the past.