Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Place of Residence/Importance:  Studied at Cambridge.  After success, moved to the country. 
School/Period Victorian age (1832-1901) 
Techniques or Genres.  Poetry.  Various stanzas but pretty regular feet and consistent within individual poems. 
Themes Good at linking landscape with 'states of mind,' something that Frost liked to do.  Sometimes wrote on current events, like "charge of the Light Brigade," but these are sometimes weaker material, without enough prep time.  Best with themes of the past.  Roots of tradition; sense of the past. . .especially the classical past. The first major writer to express awareness of the vast extent of geological past--reflects the geologists' explanation of the earth's crust, see Robin Gilmore. 
Topics of the poems. King Arthur's court (Idylls of the King; Lady of Shalott), man, God, and nature (AHH), Homer's Odyssey (Lotos Eaters), Ulysses
Major Works The Lotos-Eaters (men of Odysseus tempted not to go home by an idyllic island)
Ulysses--talking about gumption.  Not to yield, but to strive.  Wants to keep on traveling and adventuring.
Tithonus (Trojan prince who was granted immortality by Aurora, goddess of the Dawn, but not eternal youth.)
Break, Break, Break--(waves--loss)
The Princess--lyric numbers from this long narrative poem--songs, in a word.  Many have been set to music.  This story is the basis for Gilbert's book for Princess Ida, or , Bunthorne's Bride--see the section on Oscar Wilde for more on that matter.
  1. Sweet and Low
  2. The Splendor Falls
  3. Tears, Idle Tears
  4. Ask Me No More
  5. Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
Flower in the Crannied Wall
Crossing the Bar (written when he was 80)
In Memoriam:  A. H. H.  His pal Hallam was an "all-wise counselor" as well as being engaged to his sister, whose wedding (to another man, nat'rally!)is described in the Epilogue.  Hallam was still a 22 year old kid when he died.  Written in quatrains, iambic tetrameter abba, an "exacting" form that challenged Tennyson to make any variety.  Intense expressions of doubt in sections 54-56 and other sections, periodically returning, so that the transition from doubt to trust in God is not smoothly ascending.  I quote Norton, page 1127.  "Tennyson was overwhelmed with doubts about the meaning of life and man's role in the universe, doubts reinforced by his own study of geology and other sciences.  In fact, these seem to be written in chronological order, but there is some falsification of this.  For example, part 104, right after Hallam's 2 year deathiversary in 1835 (in the poem) describes T. moving away from his home near Hallam's but in fact this didn't happen for another couple of years.  The whole thing was written over 17 years and then arranged into one long elegy that generally has an arc from despair to some kind of hope, but not smooth.
  1. Prologue:  Written last!  11 stanzas.  Arthur Hallam died in 1833.  Begins by addressing "Strong Son of God, Immortal Love" and asks Him to "forgive these wild and wandering cries, / Confusions of a wasted youth. . ."  He attests that God's creations are less than God Himself.  We can see, therefore, that by the end of the whole sequence (1850) Tennyson had trusted and believed in God.
  2. 5  "I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; / For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within."  . . . "In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, / . . .that large grief which these enfold / Is given in outline and no more."  Nuff said.
  3. 12  Tennyson compares his soul to Noah's dove, leaving "this mortal ark behind. . ." "Is this an end to all my care?"  In other words, he grieves and thinks and then when the dove returns to "where the body sits, [he learns] that I have been an hour away."
  4. 50  "Be near me when my light is low. . ."  Seems to be a prayer---but to God, or to Hallam?  He wants a comforter when his frame is racked with pangs that conquer trust, when his faith is dry, and when he fades away.  He is having doubts and pains.
  5. 99  Written on the second anniversary of Hallam's death, this asks the dawn if it rises again, which it unquestionably did.  He feels irony between the bird-loud dawn and the sadness of the occasion.  (September 15, 1835)  Myriads of somethings that remember death know Tennyson not, but grieve with 'im.  
  6. 120 not on the list!  Mentions electricity and actions like 'greater apes' This sounds like a reference to Darwin but his Origin of Species was not until 1871!  There was Robert Chambers' book Vestiges of Creation in 1843-6, and Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859.  Remember this poem came out in 1850.  123 also mentions geology, which was described by Sir Charles Lydell's The Principles of Geology, pub. 1832.  I should mention that in 120 Tennyson is saying that despite science, "I was born to other things" unlike the ape who evolved into man.  So he's against science's limiting views.
  7. 131  To Christ, the "spiritual rock," and to the "living will" that T. commented means the moral will of mankind, he speaks.  He asks mankind to trust "the truths that never can be proved" meaning Christianity, I guess--so in other words trusting God though he cannot be empirically proven by scientific ways, the way that geology and evolution might.
Also by Tennyson but not on the List:

Idylls of the King
To Virgil
Maud
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Lady of Shalott
Bio Details
 In his own age, he was the most popular of poets, from 1850 onwards--both in England and in America.  "The Poet of the People."  The 4th son in a family of 12 kids.  He grew up in a parsonage.  Unstable brothers and a drunk father.  Biggest trauma:  the death of his pal Arthur Hallam (1833), who had become engaged to Tennyson's sister.  Hallam was also leader of "the Apostles,"  a group of Cambridge undergrads who encouraged Tennyson to 'widen his horizons as a poet." (1094)  Became poet laureate after Wordsworth  in 1850.  Though he was at first less skillful, he studied earlier writers to hone his craft. 
Notable Quote I cannot rest from travel; I will drink / Life to the lees. . . .I am become a name. . . I am a part of all that I have met. . . How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!  ("Ulysses, " written 1833)




 Works on the List:

The Lotos-Eaters

Ulysses

Tithonus

Break, Break, Break

The Princess:

Sweet and Low

The Splendor Falls

Tears, Idle Tears

Ask Me No More

 Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

Flower in the Crannied Wall

Crossing the Bar

In Memoriam A. H. H.:  Prologue, 5, 12, 50, 99, 131

Notes derived from the Norton Anthology of British Literature, Volume II.  Fifth Edition.



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