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VICTORIAN POETRY

ALFRED TENNYSON 1809-1892

The name Alfred, Lord Tennyson is for many readers synony­mous with nineteenth-century English poetry. In his carefully wrought poems, Tennyson was a true spokesman for the middle- class Victorian Englishman. He not only reflected the attitude and morals of the day but also dealt with the doubts and difficulties, such as the problem of the human being's place in a universe that had been redefined by the new science of Darwin and others.

Tennyson was the fourth son in a family of 12 children. He grew up in the parsonage at Somersby where his father was the rector. He tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. Tennyson began writing early. In 1827, when he was only eighteen years old, he joined his brother Charles in publishing a volume with the title Poems by Two Brothers. This book attracted the favourable notice of a group of talented Cambridge undergraduates who called them­selves the "Apostles". These gifted young men encouraged Tennys­on to become a poet. In 1829 he won the Chancellor's medal for Timbuctoo. In 1830 he published his first independent volume Po­ems Chiefly Lyrical. It was met with mixed reviews in England, though in America it proved to be more popular.

Family problems and financial need forced Tennyson to leave Cambridge without a degree, but he was able to spend part of 1832 travelling with Arthur Henry Hallam. He fell in love with Emily Sellwood in 1836, yet poverty forced a series of postponements to their marriage. Family problems (one brother was insane, another an opium addict), money worries, and ill health plagued Tennyson through the 1840's.

In 1850, the year of his marriage and of his succession to the Laureateship, Tennyson published his greatest poem, In Memori- am. It is an elegy written to the memory of his friend, Hallam, who had died suddenly in 1833 while on a visit to Vienna. Hallam's sudden death overwhelmed Tennyson with grief. But this poem is much more than a personal lament. With tender memories of his dead friend, Tennyson meditates on their companionship as young men in the familiar places of Lincolnshire and at Cambridge, and he shows how the recurring seasons after Hallam's death did not less­en, but only changed, his sense of grief. Beyond that, however, he ponders over the great problems of life and death which were trou­bling the minds of men in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was the period when the new discoveries of science - especially in astronomy, geology and biology - were tending to overthrow the old fixed ideas of religion. All through the poem Tennyson gives him­self up to wistful questioning, and can only answer by a wondering faith in man's dignity and immortality.

The poem In Memoriam is written in uniform stanzas rhyming abba, which Tennyson perfected and made peculiarly suitable to his theme. The passages of the poem illustrate three representative moods of the poet: the tender regret for the past when his friend was still alive, a gentle meditation on the natural landscape that he and Hallam .had once enjoyed, the philosophical doubts concerning man in the light of scientific revelation.



The years after Cambridge was a difficult period for Tennyson. But in 1850 his fortune changed. He was named Poet Laureate and finally married Emily Sellwood with whom he first fell in love in 1836 but could not marry her because of poverty.

Among the most popular of his many works were Idylls of the King (1859); Enoch Arden (1864), a work that American director D.W. Griffith made into two movies; and Locksley Hull (1886).

It was not, however, until the volume of 1833 that we get the poems which have become so familiar to us all. This volume con­tained The Lady of Slialott, the first of Tennyson's attempts at writing in verse the legends of King Arthur. Tennyson uses words and phrases to convey distinct impressions. In The Eagle he empha­sizes the stark remoteness of the eagle's nest in the images such as "clasps the crag", "close to the sun", and "watches from his moun­tain walls". Similarly, in The Lady of Slialott the entire description of Lancelot, from the first "bowshot" of his appearance to his last "flash into the crystal mirror" conveys the impression of speed and light. Critics suggest that the Lady of Shalott as a weaver of fabric is analogous to a poet, a weaver of ideas and images.

The story is really based on the legend of Elanie, the "Lily Maid of Astolat." Later the poet used Sir Thomas Malory's version of the story for one of his Idylls of the King, which he described in his book Morte d'Arthur. In the shorter poem he altered the story and the result is a purely fantastic form designed to suit the meter of the ballad. We enjoy it for its atmosphere of mystery, its four pictures - of the Lady's tower among the Autumn fields, of the Lady herself weaving her magic web, of the "bold Sir Lancelot" in all his trappings, and of the rainy day when the Lady died of her love for Lancelot, in the boat as she floated down the river until she reached Camelot, where Sir Lancelot came out to meet her:

He said ' She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott'.

In Morte d'Arthur Tennyson returned to the Arthurian legend, which he had first used as the inspiration of The Lady of Shalott. The other Idylls - Geraint, Elaine, The Holy Grail are all interest­ing as narratives. They are full of vivid pictures and magnificent­ly imagined descriptions, like that of Camelot, King Arthur's cap­ital city:

Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces

And stately, rich in emblem and the work

Of ancient kings who did their days in stone.

Some critics say that his "official" poems are uneven, yet many of his works are among the most famous in the English language. Few lines in literature are more widely known than the lines from The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why Theirs but to do and die.

During the remaining forty-two years of Tennyson's life (1850- 1892) his fame grew steadily. He became a living legend, one of the most loved, emblematic figures of the age. His gift for matching the sense and sound of his language helped make Tennyson one of the great and most loved poets of his age.


Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1289


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