Literary Perspectives on Lyme Regis

Besides their common setting of Lyme, both "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "Persuasion" are intertextual novels. In other words, both novels reference the work of other writers. This lesson provides a deeper look at some of the text's mentioned in the novels.

Fowles provides an epigraph for every chapter of "The French Lieutenant's Woman". He often quotes from the works of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and A. H. Clough. The inclusion of these writings illustrates the social, political, and scientific climate Fowles' characters inhabit. However, some of the texts referenced in the novel provide an insight into the deeper feelings of the characters.

The only poem that Fowles includes in its entirety is Matthew Arnold's "To Marguerite". Why does Fowles provide the entire text of the poem in chapter 58 of the novel? As Fowles mentions earlier, "We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words." Is "To Marguerite" the written representation of Charles's feelings toward Sarah? How do the images in the poem compare to the images of Sarah on the Cobb in chapters 1 and 2?

Jane Austen references romantic poets such as Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, in "Persuasion".
The morose character of Captain Benwick spends much of his time reading the works of these poets. Anne Elliot herself is often disposed to imagine herself in more romantic circumstances, although she claims: "the strong feelings which [romantic poetry] alone could estimate truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly" (Chapter 11).

Lord Byron's poem "And thou art dead, as young and fair", could echo the sentiments of Captain Benwick toward his deceased fiancee. Why would Anne caution against constantly exposing oneself to the sort of emotions mentioned in the poem?