A Study Of The Life And Career Of Lord Alfred Tennyson
And Selected Criticism Of His Works
Whether a person likes or dislikes the works of Lord Alfred Tennyson, most would agree that he was one of the most influential writers of his time period.
Tennyson grew up in a wealthy family never wanting for anything. English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen
Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic.
Alfred, Lord
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Tennyson's life was then uneventful. In London he was a regular guest of the literary and artistic salon of Mrs Prinsep at Little Holland House. During these later years he produced some of his best poems.
Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam (1850). The personal sorrow led the poet to explore his thoughts on faith, immortality, and the meaning of loss: "O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil." Among its other passages is a symbolic voyage ending in a vision of Hallam as the poet's muse. Some critics have seen in the work ideas, that anticipated Darwin's theory of natural selection.
"Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation's final law - / Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed - ", the poet wrote.
He was born in the same year as Darwin, but his view about natural history, however, was based on catastrophe theory, not evolution. The patriotic poem
'Charge of the Light Brigade', published in MAUD (1855), is one of Tennyson's best known works, although first Maud was found obscure or morbid by critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone. Later the poem about the Light Brigade inspired Michael Curtiz's film from 1936,
The themes of loneliness, exile and escape from reality are important aspects that characterize the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. During the 1800s, these aspects differentiated him from other Victorian poets, distinguishing him as one of the most popular poets of the Victorian era. In Tennyson's poems Mariana, and The Lady of Shalott, the artists express loneliness in their isolation from the rest of the world. The following essay will compare and contrast the displays of temporary and permanent loneliness of these artists through Tennyson's use of imagery, repetition, and word painting.
In the first stanza, the writer uses many techniques to convey the feeling of loss, when he says,
This metaphor powerfully inverts the traditional notion of a heroic knight, placing emphasis both on Crichton Smith 's own failure and upon the comparison of the tenement to a prison tower. In addition to this, the poet also indicates that he visited his mother on 'each second Sunday ' which again uses alliteration to draw our attention to the infrequency of his visits. These techniques are skilfully employed to given a clear indication of the poet 's own guilt. And the main focus of this guilt can be clearly seen in the final image of the stanza.
without warning”. Then in the third stanza, where he illuminates the allure of letting go of
“Here as before, never so help you mercy,/How strange, or odd some’er I bear myself,/As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/To put an antic disposition
He thought poetry was an art of association, it inspires readers' imagination with symbolism rather than direct imitation of life, and hold the reader's feelings and arouse them to act with passion. His style throughout the 19th century formed the mainstream of American poetry”(1).
His work was very highly regarded in his time so much so that it was said to have even been
Darwin was the British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection. Like several scientists before him, Darwin believed all the life on earth evolved over millions of years from a few common ancestors. From 1831 to 1836 Darwin served as naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle on a British science expedition around the world. In South America Darwin found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. The expedition visited places around the world, and Darwin studied plants and animals everywhere he went, collecting specimens for further study.
“I was sick – sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was
Edgar Allan Poe has to be one of the most influential writers of his time. He influenced great writers
"The Scorpion people who guard its gate,/Whose knowledge is awesome, but whose glance is/death./When he saw them, his face turned ashen with/dismay,/But he bowed down to them, the only way to shield/himself"
The entirety of Alfred Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden” is framed around three pivotal characters: Annie Lee, Philip Ray, and the title character, Enoch Arden. The poem operates through a love triangle which persists until Enoch’s death. In the excerpt at hand, Enoch is forced to hear of his failed marriage with Annie Lee, who remarried after years of believing her husband had died at sea. Miriam Lane not only informs Enoch that Annie has remarried, but that she has married Philip Ray, has allowed him to take care of her and Enoch’s children, and has borne him a child. Tennyson’s utilization of a love triangle as a prominent plot device likely suggests that Miriam’s news incites feelings of heartbreak in Enoch—he has lost both his wife and his
Furthermore the poem goes on to say “I remember you with my soul clenched in that sadness of
“Maud: A Monodrama” is the lengthy poem that dominated the first collection published by Alfred, Lord Tennyson after he became poet laureate. In its rich and romantic symbolism, it is characteristic of the great poet 's work. Notable, also, is its critique of the hypocrisy and other social failings of Victorian Britain. “Maud” became one of the best-known poems of the period, and continued to be influential even after its style became dated.
“I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away”