Miguel Garcia Morell
Vicente Forés López
Poesia Anglesa dels segles XIX i XX
17 January
2008
“Is Hope Nature?”
In this second
paper,
I’m going to analyse and comment a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
called “In
Memoriam A. H. H.”. To start, I would like to say that the poem was
written in
memory of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the eminent
historian.
He was engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister Emily, when he died suddenly
of a
stroke in
1 "So careful of the type?"
but no.
2 From
scarped cliff and quarried stone
3 She cries,
"A thousand types are gone:
4 I care for
nothing,
all shall go.
5 "Thou
makest
thine appeal to me:
6 I bring to
life, I bring to death:
7 The spirit
does but mean the breath:
8 I know no
more." And he, shall he,
9 Man, her
last work,
who seem'd so fair,
10 Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
11 Who roll'd the psalm to wintry
skies,
12 Who built
him fanes
of fruitless prayer,
13 Who
trusted God was
love indeed
14 And love Creation's final law--
15 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
16 With
ravine,
shriek'd against his creed--
17 Who loved,
who
suffer'd countless ills,
18 Who battled for the True, the Just,
19 Be blown about the desert dust,
20 Or seal'd
within
the iron hills?
21 No more? A
monster
then, a dream,
22 A discord. Dragons of the prime,
23 That tare each other in their
slime,
24 Were
mellow music
match'd with him.
25 O life as
futile,
then, as frail!
26 O
for thy voice to soothe and bless!
27 What hope of
answer, or
redress?
28 Behind the
veil,
behind the veil.
http://rpo.library
.utoronto.ca/poem/2141.html
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening
the
Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth
FIRST STANZA.
1 Wisdom and
Spirit of
the universe!
2 Thou Soul, that
art the
Eternity of thought!
3 And
giv'st to forms and images a breath
4 And
everlasting motion! not in vain,
5 By
day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
6 Of
childhood didst thou intertwine for me
7 The
passions that build up our human soul;
8 Not
with the mean and vulgar works of Man;
9 But
with high objects, with enduring things,
10 With
life and nature; purifying thus
11 The
elements of feeling and of thought,
12 And
sanctifying by such discipline
13 Both
pain and fear,--until we recognise
14 A
grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
15 Nor
was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
16 With
stinted kindness. In November days,
17 When
vapours rolling down the valleys made
18 A
lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
19 At
noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
20 When,
by the margin of the trembling lake,
21 Beneath
the gloomy hills, homeward I went
22 In
solitude, such intercourse was mine:
23 Mine
was it in the fields both day and night,
24 And
by the waters, all the summer long.
25 And
in the frosty season, when the sun
26 Was
set, and, visible for many a mile,
27 The
cottage-windows through the twilight blazed,
28 I
heeded not the summons: happy time
29 It
was indeed for all of us; for me
30 It
was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
31 The
village-clock tolled six--I wheeled about,
32 Proud
and exulting like an untired horse
33 That
cares not for his home.--All shod with steel
34 We
hissed along the polished ice, in games
35 Confederate,
imitative of the chase
36 And
woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn,
37 The
pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare.
38 So
through the darkness and the cold we flew,
39 And
not a voice was idle; with the din
40 Smitten,
the precipices rang aloud;
41 The
leafless trees and every icy crag
42 Tinkled
like iron; while far-distant hills
43 Into
the tumult sent an alien sound
44 Of
melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars,
45 Eastward,
were sparkling clear, and in the west
46 The
orange sky of evening died away.
SECOND
STANZA.
47 Not seldom from the uproar I
retired
48 Into
a silent bay, or sportively
49 Glanced
sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
50 To
cut across the reflex of a star;
51 Image,
that, flying still before me, gleamed
52 Upon
the glassy plain: and oftentimes,
53 When
we had given our bodies to the wind,
54 And
all the shadowy banks on either side
55 Came
sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
56 The
rapid line of motion, then at once
57 Have
I, reclining back upon my heels,
58 Stopped
short; yet still the solitary cliffs
59 Wheeled
by me--even as if the earth had rolled
60 With
visible motion her diurnal round!
61 Behind
me did they stretch in solemn train,
62 Feebler
and feebler, and I stood and watched
63 Till
all was tranquil as a summer sea.
First of all,
I’m going
to begin analyzing the body of the poem comparing it to “Influence of
Natural
Objects” written by William Wordsworth. The poem is composed by seven
stanzas.
As we can see, the poem is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of
iambic[1]
verse. In my opinion, the author chose this kind of verse because at
the same
time we are reading the poem, he is involving us in the centre of his
thoughts.
In this case, as I mentioned before, he wants to show us his feelings
an
emotions about the tragic incident of his best friend. I think this a
perfect
reflection of how he felt after the death of him. Trough English
history his
poetry has been defined as a depressed poetry, that’s why, Tennyson
was a man
who suffered a lot. He had two brothers, one was an opium addict and
the other
one was nut. In addition to this, his father broke the tradition of
making the
oldest son the heir. All this circumstances and more that we are going
to see
through this paper would be useful for us, the reader, to a better
understanding of Alfred Tennyson’s poetry. I have decided to start
telling you
some punctual aspects oh his life because from now on we can
understand his
words.
In the first
stanza,
Tennyson is using words such as: “scarped cliff”, “quarried stone”
and “care”
which he has given a strong song like a pulpit sound. This kind of
word makes
the reader feel compassionate with his suffering. What has happened to
his
friend is making him thinking to think about the loss of a close
friend. As
William Wordsworth did in his poem “Influence of Natural Objects”, who
tried to
teach us a moral lesson, this is what is happening to him. He is
trying to
accept and realise that Arthur is not alive. I think that he capture
his
suffering with that staging. In other words, through the image he is
presenting
us in the first stanza we can appreciate hoe the loss of his friend has
affected him. When he is talking about “quarried stones” is like if
his friend
has been unjustly kidnap from the world and nobody can do nothing to
avoid what
has happened. He also is making a question which involves the reader in
Tennyson’s mind. It is like a call to the society to help him. If we
remember
the poem by William Wordsworth, right at the beginning he starts with
an
exclamation: “Wisdom and Spirits of the Universe! From my point of
view, both
authors are calling us to help them, by reading and being interested
and
involve in what they are going to say. When he is writing this stanza
he is
very sad and he reflects it when he says: “cries”. In that part, he is
talking
about his sister who has lost the man she was going to married with.
The way he
expresses her pain makes me to feel it too. Now, he is remembering all
people
who also have gone, “all shall go”. Everybody in the world could die
no matter
when or why. It doesn’t matter if you have been a good person with
your studies
and job etc. Everybody have to die! In that point we can see the
change in the
moral of the society in the Victorian era. As we will see in the
context,
during that time, science take an important rule in people’s mind so,
it’s
possible that maybe Alfred is losing his faith in God, and in praying.
He is
questioning God’s existence.
In the second
stanza, he
is still talking about his sister. She is claiming the lost of his
loved. She
is appealing to his God or something, because in my opinion, as I said
before,
they are losing their faith, to help her. When Alfred Tennyson is
talking
about: “I bring to life, I bring to death” here appears the importance
of the
nature to him. He is embodying God to nature. Life is like a game, you
can win
or you can lose and this power is in God’s hands. He is who decides if
you can
live or you cannot. For William Wordsworth, the
most important thing
for him was
nature, the personal
development is connected
with the nature
and it has
a
transcendental meaning. He
wanted us to
learn from nature. And as Tennyson does, everything that affected to
him was
reflected and based in nature. The difference between them is that in
Tennyson
poetry he or in this case his sister is the person who claims the
nature and
God. In addition to this, the fact of losing his friend is what makes
nature
imperfect, because it is related to God. That doesn’t happen in
Wordsworth’s
poetry. In his poem, we have to learn by nature. It is perfect and
what we do
like wars etc. it’s what is destroying it. For him God is like
the “owner” of
everything so we have to pray and do what it wants and our live would
be as
perfect as nature. Alfred is also using words with a strong
connotation as:
“appeal”, “life and death”, “spirit” which makes his poetry extremely
emotional. God is the only which can calm his spirit’s
pain.
In the third
stanza, he
is talking about his friend Arthur Henry Hallam[2]
.
He is trying to understand why has he being killed. He is expressing
the pain
of his sister. She deserves him. Alfred Tennyson can appreciate in his
sisters’
eyes the pain of the loss of his love. On the other hand, we can also
understand that he is talking about the life they will have had both
in common
because of the excellent person and the brilliant works he was working
in.
Everything, the pain, the suffering etc is being appreciated in
the “wintry
skies”. The author is focusing his emotions to nature. This aspect is
also used
in the Romanticism by William Wordsworth. We have to remember
in “Influence of
Natural Objects”: “vapours rolling down the valley”. It is the same
technique
used by Wordsworth. He is using the same tone of mourning. We can
appreciate it
in words like: “last work”, “fair”, and “purpose in his
eyes”, “psalm”, “and
prayer. If you read these words in a different context you
automatically relate
them to the topic of death. In the last line of this stanza he is
remembering
his sister and friend time’s together. From my point of view, he wants
to reflect
what she contributed to him, because she is his sister. She still has
hope of
meeting him in God’s temple.
Is in the
fourth stanza
where we appreciate the change in the attitude and the change in the
belief of
Alfred Lord Tennyson. As I have mentioned before, this lost makes him
to stop
believing in God and to begin questioning himself about what he has
learned.
Since that part o the poem he still believes in the reincarnation of
his friend
and that he will be in God’s temple and that in a future he will meet
him
again. We can observe this fact because he is saying that he “trusted
to God”
but God didn’t do the same because he allowed his friend’s death. It’s
like all
his life he has been praying and trusting with him for what? When he
says
“final law”, the “Creation’s final law” what is this? In my opinion,
he is
talking about death, the separation of the lovers, and the end of the
living
together. This is the price that everybody has to pay in their life,
nobody can
avoid this fact. So this is the final law. Following his poem, now he
is
expressing the hatred he fells about God and he is bringing that
feeling to
nature. He is talking about: “ravine”, “shriek’d”, “creed”. This makes
me
thinking about the wilderness, the purgatory, since the ravines are
dark and
deep. On the other hand the hope could be visualized as the sun, the
light,
colours etc.
In the fifth
stanza,
Tennyson is talking about himself ad what he suffered since he was a
child. We
have to remember and in my opinion, it’s necessary to stay for a better
understanding, that not only his brothers suffered addictions and
illness. He
also had a fear of mental illness. He spent few weeks under doctor’s
car e
because of epilepsy. At the end of the twenties, he became paranoid
and violent
as a result of his father mental conditions worsened. From my point of
view, I
here where he expresses the suffering he had to pass through his
life. “Who
suffer’d countless ills”, as we have just seen, his family suffered a
lot of
ills and he is remembering constantly us the last one, the death of
Arthur.
Moreover, he is saying that the way of leaving this period was
battling “for
the True, the Just”. And what was just during that time? I have read
that he
feels impoverished when he was younger, because he couldn’t understand
why his
uncles were rich and he was nothing. In my opinion, there is a very
important
aspect over here when he writes: “blown about the desert dust”. This
sentence
is telling us the pass of the time and the live. He is now making
himself strong
and realising everything. William Wordsworth did the same in his poem.
In line
32 he talks
about a horse, in
my opinion when
we heard a
person talking about
a horse, we associate
this animal to
movement. So, when
we read “Proud
and exulting like
an untired horse” the
authors intention is
to pass
to another time,
a transition to
another period of
Wordsworth’s life. It is the same vision or
image, “blown”
is like movement. Furthermore, I would like to add that during that
time, when
his friend died, he also had o read a lot articles which criticizes
him. For
example:
“Since Tennyson
was
always sensitive to criticism, the mixed reception of his 1832 Poems
hurt him
greatly. Critics in those days delighted in the harshness of their
reviews: the
Quarterly Review was known as the "Hang, draw, and quarterly." John
Wilson Croker's harsh criticisms of some of the poems in our anthology
kept
Tennyson from publishing again for another nine
years.”
In my opinion this nine
years are
the time that he uses to write this part of “In Memoriam”. As I was
saying,
this criticism affected to him and the only way of continuing writing
was as he
says in the poem with “the iron hills”. He has to continue with his
life and
moreover get the success. His is following his line of writing, using
strong
meaning words which persuade the reader. But we don’t have to forget
the last
question. He is thinking and in this case the reader is involved in
his heart
and in his mind. We are taking part of his
suffering.
In
the sixth stanza, he is asking himself if he is going to see Arthur
Hallam
again. “No more?” In my opinion, when he talks about a “monster” it
deals to
God because of the fact that it has done to him. Or he wants that
everything
that has happened would be just a “dream”. Inline 22, he is evoking the
“Dragons of the prime”, it’s like William Wordsworth did in his poem
when right
at the beginning he says: “Wisdom and Spirit of
the
Universe”. He is waiting for God’s reasons. In line 23 he is saying
that he is
the only that can judge if he can or cannot live. I would like to
share with
you a quotation that makes me understand this stanza:
“But, as the
final
sections of the poem make clear, Tennyson can accept the possibility
that man
will become extinct because he has come to believe that such
extinction would
occur only when God was ready to replace man with a higher, more
spiritual
descendant. At the close of the poem, then, theological type replaces
biological type, or rather encompasses it, because faith reveals that
God's
eternal plan includes purposeful biological
development.”
This is his
last hope,
the reason of God that he was waiting and which explains him the loss
of his
dear friend. It is that there is a man who can replace Arthur Hallam
body, the
place he left when he died. In this stanza he is using words such us:
“monster”, “Dragons” which are terms that don’t exist in the real
world. This
is symbolizing the dream he talks in line 21. The last sentence could
be
understood as that wasn’t his friend’s thoughts, you know, dragons
etc. he
believed in a place where “mellow music match’d with him”. This place
might be
God’s temple. This is the place his friend must stay
in.
The last stanza, the seventh is the most
important
because he reflects the change in mind of the society during the
Victorian
period. In line 25, when he is saying: “life as futile, then, a
frail!” is
where he admits that there is no a reason to live in this world in the
Earth
because there is nothing to hope after death. In the next line, 26 he
is
thanking his friend for everything he has done for him and he is also
telling
him that he doesn’t have to worry because he has been an incredible
man who has
been loved. He wants to remember him that he was an intelligent man,
his best
friend, his great achievement he got. But apart of this, Alfred lord
Tennyson
has abandoned his trust in God; he wants to achieve other way to meet
again his
friend. In the last by one line, he is asking if there is a God
waiting for him
although there is no “hope of answer, or redress” because his close
friend
Arthur Hallam is “behind the veil” and it’s impossible for him to
communicate
with Tennyson. The author has lost his friend moreover his faith in
God. In
William Wordsworth poem in the last stanza, William Wordsworth tells
us that he
is going to “retire” from a crow. He looks like he is stressed of all
the
changes that are taking place in that time. In my opinion that’s what
Tennyson
decides to do but in a different way, he is going to retire to write
to make
people aware there is not a God waiting for us.
On the seconds part of my paper I would like to
comment
some quotations that I think they are important to analyze:
“In Memoriam's full title is 'In Memoriam A.H.H.' with the
initials
standing for Arthur Henry
Hallam.
Hallam was
Tennyson's close friend at Cambridge (Trinity
College), and they were both
members of the
Apostles. Many have speculated on the nature of their friendship, yet
it was
unlikely they were homosexual - the alleged sexual imagery[5]
in the poem simply reveals a very close friendship. In fact in one
section
Tennyson uses the analogy of a father losing his son, a mother losing
her son
or a woman losing her boyfriend. [6]
In my opinion, it could be
possible
that they were homosexual because of the intensity in which he
expresses the
loss of his friend, on the other hand, he in this poem writes also
since her
sister’s point of view, so he is also suffering because his sister has
lost his
future husband, the man who she loved. We have studied that during
that time
there were a lot of writer who were homosexual but this is no an
aspect that
affects his poetry. This poem is full of sentiments of death and
despair. The
way in which the words are put together and the utilisation of some
strong
meaning words which persuade and even make the reader feel sad is what
has
attracted me to analyse it.
There
is another one which I think that is going to make us thinking in
Alfred Lord
Tennyson intention.
“Although written without any plan at first, the parts of the
poem were
finally arranged in a pattern to cover the period of about three years
following Hallam's death. Tennyson himself insisted that it is "a poem,
not a biography .... The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are
dramatically given, and my conviction that fears, doubts, and
suffering will
find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of Love. `I' is not
always
the author speaking of him, but the voice of the human race speaking
through
him.”
H. M. McLuhan.[7]
According
to McLuhan, H. M, the part 56 of the poem “In Memoriam” by Alfred
Tennyson was
written after the lost of Arthur Hallam. As I said in the first part
of my
paper he is so depressed that these feelings make him writing about
what he was
suffering. In the quotation, we can read that “Tennyson himself
insisted that
it is “poem, not biography…” From my point of view, this is not true
because he
writes it as a consequence of the death of his friend so, in that
moment he is
not objective, so his poetry is neither objective. Moreover, it’s the
way in
which he tells us his suffering what makes me sure about what I’m
saying.
Probably, the society of that time wouldn’t accept a relationship like
this
between two men so, this point made him to say that it wasn’t a
biography, it
was just a poem.
On
the third part of the paper I would like to comment the themes that
both
authors have in common:
To start, I would like to
say that
in both authors through his poetry, I think this is an important
aspect; we can
appreciate the context in which they wrote their works. Froe example,
in
William Wordsworth poem “Influence of Natural Objects” we understand
what was
happening during that time because she expresses it through nature. On
the
other hand, here in “In Memoriam” written by Tennyson, he expresses
the way he
feels in the nature but the most important thing is that as we are
reading the
poem, step by step we are realising that religion and in this case God
is
losing its followers because of the death of his friend. There is a
change in
conception as we will see in the context. The apparition of science
opens
people a new vision of hope.
Both
authors are also asking themselves about the man’s place in the
universe.
William Wordsworth in his poem says: “The night is coming and a new
day and a
new period too. He feels tired; he can’t do more, so he “gives his
body to the
wind”. I understand it like everything is happening in the society it’s
impossible to be explained by nature, so he decides to disappear
until “all was
tranquil as a summer sea”. We can see the same in Tennyson’s poem. He
right at
the beginning he thinks that he will meet his friend Arthur in the
God’s temple
but then in the middle of the poem he is doubting about what God has
done to
his friend and moreover he don’t understand why. “Who trusted God was
love
indeed and loves Creations’ final laws”. It doesn’t mind if you pray
because
God is which decides if you can live or cannot. So, he is also
questioning
God’s existence. I have to say that both authors don’t have the same
interpretation of God. For William God is the salvation, he wants to
be in
contact with him, he claims his affection. On the other hand, in
Tennyson God
is seen as the killer of his friend. God has disappointed him, so he
hates it.
In addition to this, I would like to talk about
God as
nature. For William Wordsworth God is the creator of everything so, he
is the
perfection. If he creates the nature, we have to learn from it. He is
spending
all the time in nature that is what he wants to teach, that we have to
learn
from nature. We don’t have to ask anything, we have to guess it from
the hills,
mountains, rivers etc. He thought that the river gave him knowledge
about
writing, to be a poet. Fro Tennyson God is who caused the death of
Arthur. It
is true that before this happening, he was a prayer and he also has
faith about
the place he will occupy in its temple. So this event makes him up his
mind and
to blame God as the culprit. We
can see
it reflected in line 28: “What hope of answer, or
redress?”
The last theme
I would
like to treat is the frightened for their loneliness. As we have read
at the
end of the poem, he is claiming the return of his friend. They were
together
since in 1829 The Apostles, an undergraduate club invited him to join.
This
group which discusses major philosophical included Arthur Henry
Hallam. What
I’m trying to say is that they spent many years of their life
together. In my
opinion this poem was written as a gratitude for his friend in a way of
remembering him. He is worried about the loneliness he is suffering,
he needs
him. He want to recover him I doesn’t matter how. The same happen in
William
Wordsworth poem. For him, something bad is happening to the society
and we are
able to understand it because it is affecting the nature. He says
that “the
orange sky of evening died away”. All of these changes influence
William
Wordsworth’s poetry. He doesn’t know how to fight against these
changes so he
decides to avoid this problem escaping from reality. He prefers to be
alone
that feeling himself loneliness in a society that he doesn’t
understand.
Continuing with
the
aspect that both authors have in common I would like to talk about
some aspects
which they have in common in their early period of their life. On the
one hand
as I have mentioned before, Tennyson when he was younger he suffered
some mental
problem as their brothers. He defines himself as an impoverish, then
his father
had a problem by excessive drinking. And an important aspect is the
power of
the money. He couldn’t understand how his uncles, Aunt Emily could
live in a
castle and didn’t help him about money all his life. And we have to
add her the
lost of his friend Arthur. On the other hand, William Wordsworth after
the
death of his mother was to a school being separated from his sister
Dorothy. “After their father's death, the
Wordsworth
children were left under the guardianship of their uncles. Although
many
aspects of his boyhood were positive, he recalled bouts of loneliness
and
anxiety. It took him many years, and much writing, to recover from the
death of
his parents and his separation”.[8]These
bad experiences made both authors to be courageous during the rest of
their
life.
I also would like to
introduce
here a quotation which shows us more similarities in nature between
William
Wordsworth and Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam 56, 1-8.[9]
“And
this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never
did betray
The heart that loved
her; 'tis her
privilege,
Through all the years of
this our
life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she
can so
inform
The mind that is within us,
so
impress<
With quietness and beauty,
and so
feed
With lofty
thoughts.”
-William Wordsworth, "Lines
Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," 122-128.[10]
"So careful of the type?"
but no.
From scarp&egrace;d cliff
and
quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types
are gone;
I care for nothing, all
shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to
me:
I bring to life, I bring to
death;
The spirit does but mean
the breath:
I know no
more."
--Alfred Tennyson, In
Memoriam 56,
1-8.
“The two personifications of nature found in these passages […]
use the
identical technique of picturing the nature of the natural world, but
to
extraordinarily different ends. Wordsworth, writing in 1798, at the
forefront
of the Romantic Era, crafts a woman who will not "betray/ The heart
that
loved her," who will "lead/ From joy to joy." He crafts nature
not just as a woman, but as a kind-hearted, benevolent woman who
serves the
good of mankind and the world. She is his source for kindness, beauty,
and
"lofty thoughts;" she is the muse and nurturer of the Romantic poet
and his mind. Similarly, Tennyson also crafts a woman to represent
nature but
on different terms: She cries from cliff-top. His woman is not a
nurturer who
will not betray but one who cares for nothing. In the Neoclassical
balance of
"I bring to life, I bring to death," Nature is portrayed as extremely
powerful and arbitrary. And where Wordsworth's female character of
Nature feeds
the mind with lofty thoughts, Tennyson's "know[s] no more. These
divergent
understandings of the same idea, expressed through identical technique,
delineate the different theological views of nature and the world that
each
work expresses.”
David
Stevenson '96, EL32, 1992
I have decided to introduce
this
extract from the Victorian web because it is the perfect example about
I have tried
to say explaining what both writers have in common. In both stanzas we
can
appreciate the different way in which the lady is being described. But
I think
it’s important to remark the different idea they have about nature.
both
represents nature as it was understood by their society.
On
the fourth part of this paper I Would like to explain the context in
which
Alfred Tennyson wrote “In Memoriam” for a better comprehension of his
work.
Moreover I’m going to put the poem in relation with the rest of his
poetic
production.
The Victorian
era was
what marked the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the
apex of the
British Empire in the
Queen Victoria
was the
queen who longest ruled in Britain, and all the changes that occurred
during
her reign, such as, cultural, political, economic, industrial and
scientific
were remarkable. At first, when Queen
Queen
Another
important event
during this period is that the House of Commons was dominated by two
parties,
the Whigs which became the
Liberals and
the Tories which ended being the Conservatives. Another event was the
revolt in
Next, I would
like to
mention that the culture also had its changes. The Gothic Revival
architecture
became very significant, leading to the Battle of Styles between
Gothic and
Classical ideals. In Victorian art, the emergence of photography,
which was
influenced by John Everett Millais and other Pre-Raphaelite artistes,
resulted
in significant. But as time passed, this art started to associate with
the
Impressionistic and Social Realist techniques which ended dominating
the later
years of this period, by artists such as Walter Sickert and Frank
Holl.
The social
structure,
before the Industrial Revolution differenced four classes. In the top
class we
could find the Church and the nobility, both known as the aristocracy.
This
class also included the royal family, the clergy, great officers of
state and
those above the degree of baronet. The people in this class were
privileged and
avoided taxes, due to it was a great powerful and wealth
class.
Then we could
find the
middle class or bourgeoisie. This class was formed by factory owners,
shopkeepers, merchants, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, traders, and
other
professionals. These people could be extremely rich, even though,
sometimes
they were not privileged.
Lastly, in the
bottom
part of the social structure we distinguish two groups. “The working
class”
referred to labourers and “the poor” which were those who didn’t work,
or
didn’t work regularly and received public charity. This lower class
contained
men, women, and children of different labours, such as factory work,
seam
stressing, chimney sweeping, mining, and so on.
The government
in this
Victorian period, consisted of a constitutional monarchy, which in
this case
was leaded by Queen
Entertainment
during the
Victorian era varied a lot. Theatre and arts continued being a point of
interests, and music, drama and opera were highly attended. Other
things that
became very popular were gambling at cards, drinking and prostitution.
These
forms of entertainment were targeted by the evangelical and reform
movements to
stop them. Other common entertainment in the Victorian ere were the
Brass bands
and “The bandstand”. Lastly an entertainment that carried out many
participants
were spectacles of paranormal events such as hypnotism, communication
with the
dead by mediumship or channelling.
Science,
technology and engineering
also had an important paper during the Victorian period. Science grew
into an
enormous discipline as many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to
the study
of natural history. Photography was realised in 1839 by Louis Daguerre
in
Beginning in the late
1840s,
major news organizations, clergymen and single women became
increasingly
interested in prostitution, which came to be known as
"The Great Social Evil”. Divorce legislation introduced in 1857 allowed for a
man to
divorce his wife for adultery, but a woman could only divorce if adultery
was
accompanied by cruelty.
In conclusion I would
like to
say that the arrival of Queen
Now,
I’m going to locate “In Memoriam” in the rest of Tennyson’s work. “A good deal of what is most likely
to be
enjoyed in Tennyson today is to be found in the work of his early and
early-middle periods”.[11]
In
his early period we find poems in the “keepsake style”, for
example: “Lilian”,
“Madeline”, and “Claribel”. There are also some other works like “The
Kraken”
or in “The Dying Swan” which are similar to the previous one. In these
poems,
Tennyson is interested in movement and imagery. Since here, there is a
change
in Tennyson. Now, he wants to capture the nature, the landscapes as
William Wordsworth.
He wrote “The Ode to Memory”. Talking about the relation between Keats
and
Tennyson, we can talk about “The Princess”
(1847). “Oenone”, “Tiresias”,
“Tithinus”, and “Ulysses” are considered his completely satisfactory
work. The
best example oh his “dramatic monologues” are his poems. “Donnes’s the
dream”
or “Eliot’s Gerontion”. But it is in Books I and II of “Paradise Lost”
where he
establish the model of the great speeches. His biographical approach in
“Ulysses” shows us how his poetry has “turned into the impersonal form
of work
of art.” In 1860 he wrote “Tithonus” in that poem appears “Tennyson’s
suavity
of diction and rhythm.” In “The Lotos-Eaters” Tennyson raises a new
topic: “the
theme of withdrawal from an uncongenial world, of escape either to
death or,
more often, to an ideal dream world. More over, in 1832 he wrote “the
To finish with
this part
of the paper, I’m going to compare the Victorian Era with the
Romanticism
background. In the Romantic period, we were able to see many changes of
monarchy, social classes, power, etc and appoint the improvements and
advantages
of the French Revolution. When talking about social classes, the
middle class,
started to grow causing competence because the system did not work.
All these
confrontations caused the French Revolution. Moreover, In 1762, the war
taxation and its effects ruined the situation and made it need a
reformation.
The fall of the Bastille symbolized the regeneration and progress of
Finally, I
would like to
finish my paper telling the reader Alfred Lord Tennyson’s last
days:
“The
success of his
1842 Poems
made Tennyson a popular poet, and in 1845 he received a Civil List
(government)
pension of £200 a year, which helped relieve his financial
difficulties; the
success of "The Princess" and In
Memoriam
and his appointment in 1850 as Poet Laureate finally established him
as the
most popular poet of the Victorian era.
At the end of his life he
get a good
pension a we can read but the most important t hing for a writer is to
become a
Poet Laureate, the most representative author during that period. This
is so
important because all his work is considered as the best. I also would
like to
comment that “In Memoriam”, was one of the favourites poems of Queen
Victoria,
who found in it the comfort after the death of
“Tennyson
suffered from extreme short-sightedness — without a monocle he could
not even
see to eat — which gave him considerable difficulty writing and
reading, and
this disability in part accounts for his manner of creating poetry:
Tennyson
composed much of his poetry in his head, occasionally working on
individual
poems for many years.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson died on October 6, 1892, at the age
of 83.
In conclusion,
I have
chosen these authors because in my opinion there is a relation between
them. It
has been amazing to realize how William Wordsworth influenced
Tennyson’s
poetry. I have also suffered with him the lost of his friend. He
trough his
poetry involves the reader in his mind and we can feel his suffering
and
emotions. On the other hand, comparing both periods, the Victorian and
the
Romantic I have learned the differences between them and how society
was
changing. These changes are always presented in poetry, as we have
realized. We
have seen in this paper two different points of view of a same aspect:
death
and nature. I would like to finish saying that the themes that they
treated are
still being thought nowadays because for example there are a lot of people who don’t believe in
God. Is
God waiting for us? Is there life after death?...I would like to
answer this
questions but it’s impossible!
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WEBGRAPHY
Ford, Boris
(ed) The New English Pelican Gid
to
English Literature. 6. From Dickens to Hardy Harmonsworth: Penguin,
1982-1988
Mayhead,
Robin. “The Poetry of Tennyson”: 220, 235.
Ford, Boris
(ed) The New English Pelican Gid
to
English Literature. 5. From Blake to Byron Harmonsworth: Penguin,
1982
(1957)
Geofffrey
Strickland, Christopher Thacker. “The European Background to
Romanticism”:
209, 213-214.
Khurana, Simran. Your Guide to Quotations. 3 January
2008.
<htt
p://quotations.about.com/od/poemlyrics/a/wor
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/a>>
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http://en.wikiped
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ipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson
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3 January 2008 < http://rpo.library
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<
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ht
tp://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/imstruct.html
“Victorian
Mourning: The Significance of Sound in Poems of Death” Abigail
Newman '06,
English 151,
“In
Memoriam — Imagery and Motifs: Song and Sing” Jon Lanestedt,
http://www
.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/newman14.html
“In Memoriam —
Imagery
and Motifs: Time and Tour” Jon Lanestedt, University of
“On Borrowed Time: Cycles
of
Narrative, Nature, and Memory in the work of Tennyson and Eliot” Sarah
Eron
'05, English 156 (Victorians and Moderns),
http://
www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/nature4.html
“Nature
in Wordsworth and Tennyson. David Stevenson '96, EL32,
http:
//www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennybio.html
“Alfred
Lord Tennyson: A Brief Biography. Glenn Everett, Associate Professor of
English,
http:
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“An
Introduction to In Memoriam. George P. Landow, Professor of English
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http:
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“Religion and Emotion in Tennyson's In Memoriam” Hannah
Sikorski,
Postgraduate Student, English/Religious Studies 256,
Aula Virtual. Universitat de Valencia. 2 January 2008
January 2008. Word Reference. <http://www.wordreference.com/
[1] . An iamb or
iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of
poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the
feet of
the quantitative
meter
of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long
syllable (as in
i-amb). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-
syllabic
verse in
English,
where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed
by a
stressed syllable (as in a-bove).
[2] Arthur
Henry
Hallam (February 1,
1811 – September
15, 1833) was an
English poet, best
known as the
subject of a major work by his best friend, Alfred, Lord
Tennyson.
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 27th December
2007.
[11] Ford, Boris (ed)
The New English Pelican Gid to
English
Literature. 5. From Blake to Byron Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1982
(1957)
Geofffrey Strickland, Christopher
Thacker. “The
European Background to Romanticism”: 220.