ALFRED
TENNYSON:
1. Historical and social context:
To understand
the poetry of Tennyson is so important to know the situation where is was born,
so it is necessary to talk about the Victorian Era.
Victorianism is the name given to the attitudes, art, and culture of the latter
two-thirds of the 19th century, especially
with reference to English-speaking
peoples and the British Empire.
For much of this century the term Victorian conveyed connotations
of "prudish," "repressed," and "old fashioned."
What is more, the term Victorian
literally describes things and events in the reign of Queen
This period is characterized by
all of the social changes that made the writer to talk about problem related
with the time, although the main idea was the romantic expressions in the
English literature; many of them put their eyes on the English democracy, the
education in general, the industrial process and the material philosophy that
this change did.
Victorianism
covers the rise of an industrialized society
with a newly urbanized middle class,
the interconnection of the globe with telegraph and railway, the expansion
of trade, the establishment of the gold standard and other
programs meant to make orderly and regular the path of commerce, manufacturing and economic growth.
Some
characteristics of the Victorianism are these: In science and technology, the
Victorians invented the modern idea of invention. In religion, the Victorians
experienced a great age of doubt, the first that called into question
institutional Christianity on such a large scale. In literature and the other
arts, the Victorians attempted to combine Romantic emphases upon self, emotion,
and imagination with Neoclassical ones upon the public role of art and a
corollary responsibility of the artist. In ideology, politics, and society, the
Victorians created astonishing innovation and change: democracy, feminism, unionization
of workers, socialism, Marxism, and other
modern movements took form. So it was the first age that attempted modern
solutions.
The Victorian age was not one, not single, simple, or unified; it was an
age of paradox and power.
In the other hand, we can say that there was another interesting thing
related by the characteristic; and it is the religious believes mix with the
age; for example: the theory of development and the historic study of the
Bible.
A
reason why makes Victorians Victorian is because their sense of social
responsibility, a basic attitude that obviously differentiates them from their
immediate predecessors, the Romantics. An example of this statement is this: Tennyson might go to
From this time
we can say that there were three main authors, which wrote about social
questions of the Victorian era. Although began inside the romanticism, Alfred
Tennyson was conscious with the social problems and the politic power, like his
elegy “In Memorian” (1850). His style and his conservative English though, was in contrast with the
intellectualism of Robert Browning.
The third of
them was Matthew Arnold, who was separately of them because his though was so
equilibrated. His work as a literature critic is so interesting and his poetry
shows a contrast between his pessimism and his duty.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorianism>
2. Biography:
Alfred Tennyson,
known as Lord Tennyson, was one of the most popular English poets in the
Victorian Era. His compositions are inspirited in mythology themes, the main
characteristics are the musicality and the depth psychology in his portraits.
Tennyson was born
on 6 August in
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
In 1827
Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his two
older brothers to
In 1829 The Apostles, an
undergraduate club, invited Tennyson to join. The group, which met to discuss
major philosophical and other issues, included Arthur Henry Hallam,
James Spedding, Edward Lushington, and Richard Monckton Milnes — all eventually
famous men who entries in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Arthur Henry
Hallam and Tennyson knew each other only four years, but their intense
friendship had major influence on the poet. On a visit to Somersby, Hallam met
and later became engaged to Emily Tennyson. Hallam's death from illness in 1833
(he was only 22) shocked Tennyson profoundly, and his grief lead to most of his
best poetry, including In Memoriam , "The Passing of Arthur", "Ulysses,"
and "Tithonus."
Since Tennyson was always sensitive to criticism, the mixed reception of
his 1832 Poems hurt him greatly.
Late in the 1830s Tennyson grew concerned about his mental health and
visited a sanitarium run by Dr. Matthew Allen, with whom he later invested his
inheritance and some of his family's money. When Hallam
death, Tennyson did not published any verse during ten years. It was the result
of the feeling that he had for the loss.
In 1835
Tennyson felt in love with Rosa Baring, a beautiful dame and his refusal was
the main inspiration in his most consolidate poems and recorded him his social
situation. But in 1836 met Emily Sellwood whose married in 1850. After three
years of his publication “the Princess”,
in 1852 was born his first son called Hallam. The success of his 1842 Poems made Tennyson a popular poet, and in 1845 he received a
Civil List pension of £200 a year (government), which helped relieve his
financial difficulties.
The success of
"The Princess" and In Memoriam and his
appointment in 1850 as Poet Laureate
(succeeding William
Wordsworth in this honor) finally established him as the
most popular poet of the Victorian era. Tennyson had written some of his
greatest poetry, but he continued to write and to gain in popularity. In 1853,
as the Tennysons were moving into their new house on the Isle of Wight,
His admiration
for Tennyson's poetry helped solidify his position as the national poet, and
Tennyson returned the favor by dedicating The Idylls of the King to his memory. Queen Victoria later summoned
him to court several times, and at her insistence he accepted his title, having
declined it when offered by both Disraeli and Gladstone.
In 1884, the Royals granted
Tennyson a baronetcy; he was now known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Although Tennyson was the
most popular poet in England in his own day, he was often the target of mockery
by his immediate successors, the Edwardians and Georgians of the early
twentieth century. Today, however, many critics consider Tennyson to be the
greatest poet of the Victorian Age; and he stands as one of the major
innovators of lyric and metrical form in all of English poetry.
Tennyson death in October of 1892 and was buried in the Westminster
Abbey.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennybio.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/context.html
<http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761574603/Tennyson_Alfred_Lord.html>
3.
Influencies of Tennyson:
Tennyson is going to be one of the most
referent poets to define the Victorian Era. From him we can emphasize that he
is most conventional author. The type of poetry that he use is very
superficial. His compositions are inspirited in mythological and medieval
themes. Tennyson is characterize by his metrical perfection, his musicality and
the deep psychology in his portraits. His poems talk about the past time, but,
in contrast, this characters are done in cardboard, stone, as if they were in
front of a false reality.
The themes that interested him were the religious problems, for example
faith, the social change and the political power. This themes are so
characterise from the period of time that the represents.
His main composition is In Memoriam.
His influences were differents. In the first
position his major would be his father, because since he was a child he formed
him so severely, and the his death in that conditions was a psychological mark.
Another important influences was the death of his friend Hallam, whom dedicated
his main poem In Memoriam, like a goodbye. Where he told the reader the
commotion and the sorrow of a suddenly death.
His last influence was his wife, Rosa Baring.
6. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson
4. Works of Tennyson :
Poems,
by Two Brothers
(1827) (discussions)
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) (discussions)
Poems (1833)
"The Poet"
Two-Volume
Edition of Poems (1842)
The Princess, a Medley (1847) (discussion)
In Memoriam (1850)
Maud (1855) (discussion — Musical setting of "Come into the garden, Maud.")
The Idylls of the King (1859)
"Tithonus" (1860)
Enoch Arden (1864)
Lucretius
(1868) The Idylls of the King (1869)
The Idylls of the King (1871)
"The Last Tournament"
The Idylls of the King (1872)
Queen Mary
(1875) Harold (1876) The Falcon
(1879) Ballads and Other Poems (1880)
The Cup (1881)
The Promise of May (1882)
Becket (1884)
Tiresias, and Other Poems (1885)
The Idylls of the King (1885)
Locksley Hall, sixty years after (1886) Demeter, and other
poems (1889)
The Death of OEnone, and other Poems (1892) The Foresters
(1892)
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/works.html>
5.
poem:
This poem,
"Break, Break, Break", is a lyric poem that Alfred Tennyson was
believed to have completed in 1834.It belong to the 1842 volume. The poem has
happened during the famous "ten years' silence" from 1832 to 1842; it
is clear that Tennyson was refininghis ironic techniques.
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.
O well for the fisherman’s
boy,
That he shouts with his
sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat
on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the
hill;
But O for the touch of a
vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice
that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O
Sea!
But the tender grace of a
day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
7.
http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/bbb.htm
- Comment:
The poem break,
break, break by Tennyson, is one of his collection called “Poems”, Published in
1842. I have chosen this poem of Tennyson because the title,
as the poem of Wordsworth. It’s like that because I wanted to have the same way
of election, and the name of the poem showed me something good; I did not and I
do not what was good but I have like a premonition. Moreover, suddenly I read the poem (as in the other poem) and I
thought that it could be a good poem for a paper and because I think that I
have found information for to do the paper (as in the poem of Wordsworth too).
This poem is not the one of the most famous
poems of him because he wrote a lot of it. In the poem Break, Tennyson tells us
the history of one man who was in the beach, in the seashore, watching it. The
man only ask for waves break itself in the same manner that his heart has
broken. The man who has broken his heart maybe can be you, perhaps recording a
wrong love, the death of a friend, because these things were very important is
his following compositions.
The sensation
that he want to transmit with that poem is a break man, shattered. This sensation
appear during all of the poem because he always repeat the word “break”, in the
title, in the first of the poem and at the end. With these, the author wants
that the reader do not forget the sense of the writer.
Tennyson turns ‘an ordinary sea-shore
landscape into means of finding a voice indescribably sweet for the dumb spirit
of human loss’. So, of this statement, the poem is symbolic.
-Sinfield, Alan. Rereading
literature Alfred Tennyson.Oxford, 1986. Basic Blackwell, Ltd.
The structure
of the poem, we must say that it is deal with a poem with four strophes, and
each one with four verses.
ABCB
DEFE GBFB ABHB
We must talk
about the author use the exclamation at the last part of the first verse; in
the second strophe use it in the second and in the fourth; the third strophe
appears in the fourth verse and finally appears in the first verse.
There are some
rhetorical devices as apostrophes (lines 1 and 2), metaphors (also lines 1 and
2), paradox (lines 11 and 12), personification (lines 1 and 2), alliteration
(lines 9 -12).
6.
Bibliography:
1.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. Reservados todos
los derechos.
2.
http://html.rincondelvago.com/influencia-del-arte-prerrafaelita-en-la-epoca-victoriana.html.
3. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson.
4.
http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/bbb.htm.
5. http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Tennyson.html
6. http://victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/kincaid/ch3a.html
7. <http://www.victorianweb.org>
8.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorianism>
9. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/works.html
10. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/context.html
11.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennybio.html
12.
<http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761574603/Tennyson_Alfred_Lord.html>