Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree. In 1860 ...Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year Poems and Ballads brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with indecent themes and the precept of art for art's sake. Although he produced much after this success in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration, and bold, complex rhythms. Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail, and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his forties he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered. Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels. In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well. Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior but some individual poems are exceptional; By the North Sea, Evening on the Broads, A Nympholept, The Lake of Gaube, and Neap-Tide. Swinburne lived another thirty years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'. Algernon Charles Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909 at the age of seventy-two.
Character design operates on similar principles whether one is Gotham City's best cat burglar or a queen sitting for a royal portrait: iconography legitimizes narrative. This essay (expanded from a ...more informal presentation) discusses some of the ways comics used the iconography and popular narratives of historical women in power - Elizabeth I, Lucrezia Borgia, Caterina Sforza - as archetypes for women characters in the superhero-comic canon. In particular, Selina Kyle's Catwoman was often placed in a larger legacy of historical women of power, both as a way to explain her ambition, and a way to legitimize her presence. As Catwoman moved through comic book eras (and, eventually, other mediums), her narratives, the cultural politics that surrounded her narratives, and her "statecraft of appearances" often echoed the mythmaking practiced by those historical women in power - relationship to power, relationship to authority and succession, relationship to the past - as Catwoman moves from a comic-book character into a one-woman pop-culture empire.
In this article, the author offers a perspective on opera's child prodigy problem, one that addressess unflinchingly the historical elephant in the room. For most of its 400-year existence, opera has ...embraced voices that we would consider immature. Our modern pedagogic practices present a well-justified break from that tradition. Focusing on the historical circumstances of the standard bel canto repertory, the author will provide evidence that the average female singer's career peaked between about age 20 to age 35, implying that most successful singers have been doing exactly what Laura Bretan did: learning and singing mature repertory in their teens. The author highlights these facts not because he seeks some return to the old abuses of the Italian bel canto tradition. Far from it: He believes we have a moral imperative to use hard science as our guide and not damage voices. If anything, acknowledging the history of bel canto practice can serve as a warning. The author highlights these facts, rather, to show that we evoke traditions and frame our art as purely traditional at our peril. To understand why, we first need to understand and contextualize more honestly some of opera's old traditions.
While Browning was writing about a disappointing marriage in "Andrea del Sarto," his home country publicly engaged in the discussions of marriage, infidelity, and divorce that led to the 1857 Divorce ...and Matrimonial Causes Act, legislation that notoriously codified the sexual double standard whereby men-but not women-could sue for divorce solely on the basis of a spouse's adultery.4 Lucrezia's openness about her infidelity, and Andrea's connivance at it and devotion despite it, would present challenges to received notions of morality and marriage in Victorian England.\n Readers can see that these are the actings out of beings who naturally chafe at the subjections and artificial restrictions usual to women. "21 Lucrezia's "mould" will be less distinct than the sculptor's emergent statue because she is always mediated and imagined in the materials of her husband's language, but that exquisite subtlety is the price of Browning's choice of dramatic monologue as his medium, and the reward of his experiment testing the limits of speech, gender, and genre.
