Tennyson as a poet

  Hello, 

       I am Nidhi Jethava and in this blog I am going to evaluate Lord Tennyson as a poet.

His Life. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the most renowned poet of the Victorian era. His work includes 'In Memoriam,' 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and 'Idylls of the King.'

Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth (Fytche) Tennyson. The poet's grandfather had violated tradition by making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for the poet's father to enter the ministry. (See the Tennyson Family Tree.) The contrast of his own family's relatively straitened circumstances to the great wealth of his aunt Elizabeth Russell and uncle Charles Tennyson (who lived in castles!) made Tennyson feel particularly impoverished and led him to worry about money all his life.

He also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. His father and brother Arthur made their cases worse by excessive drinking. His brother Edward had to be confined in a mental institution after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks under doctors' care in 1843. In the late twenties his father's physical and mental condition worsened, and he became paranoid, abusive, and violent.

In 1827 Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his two older brothers to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Whewell — see nineteenth-century philosophy. Because they had published Poems by Two Brothers in 1827 and each won university prizes for poetry (Alfred winning the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1828 for "Timbuctoo") the Tennyson brothers became well known at Cambridge. In 1829 The Apostles, an undergraduate club, whose members remained Tennyson's friends all his life, invited him to join. The group, which met to discuss major philosophical and other issues, included Arthur Henry Hallam, James Spedding, Edward Lushington (who later married Cecilia Tennyson), and Richard Monckton Milnes — all eventually famous men who merited entries in the Dictionary of National Biography.

 His Poetry :- 

When he was seventeen years old Tennyson collaborated with his elder brother Charles in Poems by Two Brothers (1827): The volume is a slight one, but in the light of his later work we can already discern a little of the Tennysonian metrical aptitude and descriptive power. His prize poem of Timbuctoo (1829) is not much better than the usual prize poem. His Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), published while he was an undergraduate, are yet immature, but in pieces like Isabel and Madeline the pictorial effect and the sumptuous imagery of his maturer style are already conspicuous

His volume of Poems (1833), which is often referred to as Poems-(1832), because, in spite of its official title, it appeared in December of the earlier year, is of a different quality, and marks a decided advance. It contains such notable poems as The Lady of Shalott, (Enone, The Lotos-Eaters, and The Palace of Art, in which we see the Tennysonian technique approaching perfection. Then in 1842 he produced two volumes "of poetry that set him once and for all among the greater poets of his day. The first volume consists mainly of revised forms of some of the numbers published previously, the second is entirely new. It opens with Morte d''Arthur, and contains Ulysses, Lgcksley Hall, and several other poems that stand at the summit of his achievement.

The later stages of his career are marked chiefly by much longer poems. The Princess (1847) is a serio-comic attempt to handle the theme that was then known as 'the new woman.' For the sake of his story Tennyson imagines a ladies' academy with a mutinously intellectual princess at the head of it. For a space a tragedy seems imminent, but in the end all is well, for the Princess is married to the blameless hero. The poem is in blank verse, but interspersed are several singularly beautiful lyrics. The humour is heavy, but many of the descriptions are as rich and wonderful as any Tennyson ever attempted.

In Memoriam (1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. Tennyson brooded over the subject for years; and upon this elegiac theme he imposed numerous meditations on life and death, showing how these subjects were affected by the new theories of the day. For the first, and probably the only, time, Tennyson's feelings were stirred and troubled. The result was the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest, poetry he ever produced. The poem is adorned with many beautiful sketches of English scenery; -and the metre--now called the In Memoriam metre--which is quite rare, is deftly managed.

Maud and Other Poems (1855) was received with amazement by the public. The chief poem is called a 'monodrama'; it consists of a series of lyrics which reflect the love and hatred, the hope and despair, of a lover who slays his mistress's brother, and then flies broken to France. The whole tone of the work is forced and fevered, auu of war and bloodshed. It does not add to Tennyson's fame.

In 1859, 1869, and 1889 Tennyson issued a series of Idylls of the King, which had considered and attempted a great theme that Milton abandoned--that of King Arthur and the Round Table. Many doting admirers saw in the Idylls an allegory of the soul of man; but in effect Tennyson drew largely upon the simple tales of Malory, stripping them of their "bold bawdry" to please his public, and covering them with a thick coating of his delicate and detailed ornamentation. It is doubtful if this unnatural compound of Malory-Tennyson is quite a happy one, but we do obtain much blank verse of noble and sustained power

The only other poem of any length is Enoch Arden (1864), which became the most popular of all, and found its way in translation into foreign languages. The plot is cheap enough, dealing with a seaman, supposedly drowned, who returns and, finding his wife happily married to another man, regretfully retires without making himself known. The tale, as ever, is rich with Tennysonian adornment. In particular there is a description of the tropical island where Enoch is wrecked that is among the highest flights of the poet.

His Poetical Characteristics :

 (a) His Choice of Subject :-

Tennyson's earliest instincts, as seen in the volumes 'of1830, 1833, and 1842, led him to the lyric and legendary narrative as his principal themes, and these he handled with a skill and artistry which he rarely surpassed. Already, however, in the 1842 volume, there are signs of the ethical interest which was to be the mainspring of his later work. As a thinker, Tennyson lacked depth and originality. He was content to mirror the feelings and-aspirations of his time, and his didactic work lacks the burning fire which alone can transform the didactic into truly great art. The requirements 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 newspaper of his age. Of them, all that need be said here is that it is surprising that they are as good as they are. For the rest, with notable exceptions such as Ulysses and In Memoriam, Tennyson's poems are best when he reverts to the lyric or narrative themes which were his original inspiration.

(b) His Craftsmanship :-

No one can deny the great care and skill shown in Tennyson work. His method of producing poetry was slowly to evolve the lines in his mind, commit them to paper, and to revise them till they were as near perfection as he could make them. Consequently we have a high level of poetical artistry. No one excels Tennyson in the deft application of sound to sense and in the subtle and pervading employment of alliteration and vowelmusic. such passages as this abound in his work:

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

The Princess 

This is perhaps not the highest poetry, but shows only a kind of manual, or rather aural, dexterity; yet as Tennyson employs it it is effective to a degree. His excellent craftsmanship is also apparent in his handling of English metres, in which he is a tireless experimenter. In blank verse he is not so varied and powerful as Shakespeare, nor so majestical as Milton, but in the skill of his workmanship and in his wealth of diction he falls but little short of these great masters

(c)His pictorial Quality :-

In this respect Tennyson follows the example of keats. Nearly all Tennyson's poems, even the simplest, abound in ornate description of najural and other sceaes. His method is to seize upon appropriate details, dress them in expressive and musical phrases, and thus throw a glistening image before the reader's eye:

d) Tennyson's lyrical quality :-

Tennyson's lyrical quality is somewhat uneven. The slightest of his pieces, like The Splendour Falls, are musical and attractive; but on the whole his nature was too self-conscious and perhaps his life too regular and prosperous, to provide a background for the true lyrical intensity of emotion. Once or twice, as in the wonder ful Break, break, break and Crossing the Bar, he touches real greatness: 

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