Paper no.6. Lord Tennyson as a Victorian Poet

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Name:Ekta Jayswal
Class: M.A.[SEM:2]
Roll No:10
Paper No.6:- The Victorian Literature
Enrollment No: PG2069108420180027
Batch:2017/19
Email Id: ektajayswal12@gmail.com
Submitted to:Dr. Dilip Barad

S.B.Gardi English Department [M.K.B.U.] 




*Victorian Period:-

England’s Victorian period, named for the time of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901), was characterized by dramatic changes, including a shift from an economy based on land ownership to a more modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing. There was the Industrial Revolution, challenges to religious faith, advances in science, and the changing roles of women. Overall, Victorian England was a time of peace, prosperity, social and technological advances, and sophisticated sensibilities. Victorian poetry reflected this through its interest in visual descriptions, chivalry and nobility, genteel manners, and social norms and practices.

During that period  many great writers gave their best contribution to English age as a gift. Browning,Dickens,Thackray, Meredith,Carlyle,Macaulay and Ruskin there are some great stars of the age.Tennyson the prominent poet of the age.So, now let’s we discussing about Tennyson in detailed.

*About Lord Tennyson:-

He was Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem. His father, the Reverend George Tennyson, tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. 

Tennyson escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. Although the poems in the book were mostly juvenilia, they attracted the attention of the "Apostles," an undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Hallam. The "Apostles" provided Tennyson, who was tremendously shy, with much needed friendship and confidence as a poet. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends; they toured Europe together in 1830 and again in 1832. Hallam's sudden death in 1833 greatly affected the young poet. The long elegy In Memoriam and many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to Hallam.

In 1830, Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and in 1832 he published a second volume entitled simply Poems...

*His Poems:-

#1910- *Vivien's Song
#1870- *Marriage Morning
#2014- *From "The Princess"
#2013- *From The Princess [Sweet and low, sweet and low]
#1889- *Crossing the Bar 
#1860- *Tithonus 
#1854- *The Charge of the Light Brigade
#185-  *The Eagle 
#1850- *In Memoriam,Epilogue, [O true and tried, so well and long]
#1850- *In Memoriam, [To Sleep I got my powers away]
#1850- *The Splendor Falls 
#1850- *In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
#1847- *Tears, Idle Tears
#1842- *Ulysses
#1842- *Break,Break,Break
#1833- *The Lady of Shalott
#1832 - *The Hesperides
#1830-  *The Kraken

*His notable plays:- 
    

  1875 - Queen Marry

1876 - Harold 
1884 - Becket 
1879 - The Falcon
1881 - The Cup
1892 - The Forest

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passion.”

          These are the words written by Tennyson himself. He was not only poet but also voice of people on that contemporary society. He plumbs of the depth of his own consciousness while also giving voice to the national consciousness of Victorian society. He was appointed as poet laureate at the death of Wordsworth, in 1850 and because of it he felt the importance of his place, and honored and filled it. And after it for almost half a century Tennyson was not only a man and a poet but he was a voice, the voice of a whole people, expressing in exquisite melody their doubts and their faith, their griefs and their triumphs. In the wonderful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England’s greatest poets.

*Tennyson’s Poetical Characteristics:

# His Choice of Subject:

He was known as legendary narrator because of his narrative techniques in the volumes of 1830, 1833, and 1842. He was content to mirror the feelings and aspirations of his time but we can say that lack of depth, originality and the burning fire which we can surely expect in great literary work, we can show in Tennyson’s writing. The requirement of his office as Poet Laureate led to the production of a number of occasional poems which have caused him to be described, contemptuously, as the news paper of his age. Tennyson’s poems are best when he reverts to the lyric or narrative themes which were his original inspiration.

# His Craftsmanship:

We can easily mention method of production of Tennyson’s work cause of it’s near to perfection and great care and skill shown in his work. He was expert in handling of English metres. His works also contain alliteration and vowel-music and some lines from his poem, ‘The Princess’, can show all these stuff into his work.

“Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.”

#  His Pictorial Quality:

In this quality he obeyed the examples of Keats. Almost in all of Tennyson’s poems, even in some simplest also, we can fine this type of description of nature and other scene.

# His Lyrical Quality:

It is somewhat uneven. His poems are musical and attractive: but we can judge that nature of his poems is self conscious most of the time and too regular in terms of poetry. And critics gave rezone of Tennyson’s regular life and regular background for true lyrical intensity of emotion. We can see this greatness in his famous poem,‘Break, break, break’:

“Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.”

#  His Reputation:

To his contemporaries he was a demigod: but younger people strongly assailed his patent literary mannerisms. Consequently after his death, for more than twenty years, his reputation suffered considerably. He is not a supreme poet but after all deductions are made, his high place in Temple of Fame is assured.

Tennyson’s Poetry....

**“In Memoriam”....

The poem begins as a tribute to and invocation of the “strong son of God’. Man never seen God’s faced and has no proof of his existence he can only reach God through faith. The poet attributes the sun and moon to God, acknowledges him as the creator of life and death in both man and animals. Man cannot understand why he was created but he must believe that he was not made simply to die.

The Son of Gods seems both human and devines. Man has control of his own will, but this is only so that he might exert himself to do God’s will. All of man’s constructed systems of religion and philosophy seem solid but are merely temporal, in comparison to the eternal God.

The speaker asks that God that God help foolish people to see his light. He repeatedly asks for God to forgive his grief for “thy creature, which I found so fair.”The speaker has faith that this departed fair friend lives on in God, and asks God to make his friend wise.


**"Ulysses"....


Ulysses declares that there is little point in his staying home “by this still healthy” with his ode wife, doing out rewards and punishment for the unnamed masses who live in his kingdom.

He speaking to himself that he “cannot rest from travel” but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of life. He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels for everyone who wanders and roams the earth.

Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to remain stationary. He wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.

In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, traveled and weathered life’s storms over many years. Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they are not as “strong in will” and are sustained by their resolve to push onward relentlessly; “To strive to seek to find, and not to yield”.

**"Tithonus"....

The poem Tithonus reflects the feeling of the Victorian era rather well. It is a poem that is reflecting Prince Tithonus’s feelings. As we read the poem, we can truly feel Tithonus’s regret at doing what he has done in accepting immortality. Tithonus was the brother of Priam, who was king of Troy. When Tithonus was a young man, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, noticed his good looks. Unfortunately, she had a habit of carrying off handsome young men she was attracted to. She abducted Tithonus and asked Zeus to grant him immortality,which he did. The problem was she forgot to ask for eternal youth to go with it. Tithonus, after fathering her two sons, just got older and older and older and older and older until he was all shriveled and could only chirp like a cicada,but obviously cannot die.

**"Break, Break, Break"....

This short poem from 1842, also responding to the death of Tennyson’s friend Hallam, embodies the Victorian attitude to death and mourning. It teeters on sentimentality and overblown rhetorical emotion (too much for some modern readers), but behind the public poem is a heartfelt personal grief.

**‘'The Charge of the Light Brigade"....

 No list of the best Tennyson poems would be complete without ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, one of his best-known poems; the poem is one of the rare instances of a Poet Laureate producing a good poem while in office. He wrote the poem on 2 December 1854 in response to an article in The Times about the battle, and the poem was published in The Examiner a week later. You can listen to Tennyson reading the poem here.

**"Crossing the Bar"....

A meditation on death, written when Tennyson was in old age, ‘Crossing the Bar’ is one of the shortest poems on this list. There is little more that needs saying, so we’ll let this poem speak for itself.

**'‘The Lotos-Eaters"....

One of two poems on this list inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey (see ‘Ulysses’ below for the other), ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ was written by Tennyson following a trip to Spain he undertook with his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It tells of the mariners who come upon ‘a land / In which it seemed always afternoon’, and, upon 

Tennyson taking the lotus plant, enter a dreamlike state. Over a century before Aldous Huxley was opening the doors of perception, Tennyson was transforming the experience of taking drugs into literature. The poem inspired the name of the Lotus Eaters, a New Wave band from the 1980s.

#Conclusion:-

The Victorian epoch was exceedingly productive of literary work of high quality and Lord Tennyson also gave new summit to literature of Victorian Era and contribute lot in it. For a full half century Lord Tennyson was the voice of England, loved and honored as a man and a poet, not simple by a few discerning critics, but by a whole people that do not easily give their allegiance to anyone man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson lived a long time, and wrote a great deal of poetry. The definitive edition of his Poems stretches to three large volumes.Tennyson poems, ranging from his narrative poems to lyrics and elegies and everything in between.To enter a world of myth, magic, and emotional depth, click on the links we’ve provided to each poem.


Work Sited by: 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson


Thank You... 😊