SOURCE: "Swinburne's Doublings: Tristram of Lyonesse, The Sisters, and The Tale of Balen, " in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4, Autumn-Winter, 1990, pp. 1-17.

In the following essay, Riehl addresses the artistic function of the doubling of characters and character names in three of Swinburne's poems.

Long regarded as deploring work, Swinburne's later verse has gradually won serious regard as great art from twentieth-century readers. [In SAQ, 1958] Paull F. Baum's study of "A Nympholept" (1958) paved the way for major revaluation of this body of Swinburne's poetry. [In Victorian Poetry, 1971] Kerry McSweeney echoed Baum's admiration for "A Nympholept," and added "The Lake of Gaube" as its equal. [In TSLL, 1972] Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV demonstrated how the worksheets for Tristram of Lyonesse reveal an alert creative imagination maintaining amazing control over the composition of that long poem. Others have tended to swell the chorus of such acclaim. In his later poems, Swinburne's...