Elegiac Note in Tennyson’s Verse: W.H. Auden, commenting on Tennyson, said: “There was little about melancholia that he (Tennyson) did not know; there was little else that he did.” While the second part of this comment is an unkind cut, the first part emphasizes an essential truth about the poetry of Tennyson. T.S. Eliot called … Read more
Tennyson’s Scepticism: Tennyson represents’ the Victorian Age in the same way as Pope represents the early 18th century. The Victorian Age was marked throughout by the spirit of enquiry and criticism, by scepticism and religious uncertainty, by spiritual struggle and unrest and by the analytical and critical habit of mind. The popularity of Darwin’s theory … Read more
A Gifted Poet with Unrivalled Powers: Tennyson was a great pictorial artist. He was gifted with unrivalled powers of picturing a scene, a landscape, a person in words marked with clarity and vividness. This art of pictorial painting was learnt by the poet quite early in his life by keeping Keats’s pictorial paintings as his … Read more
Tennyson’s Originality and Uniqueness: Love has always been the theme of poetry; love has inspired some of the greatest poetry of the world. In the English language, Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Byron, Browning, etc., are some of the greatest of love-poets. Tennyson is also a great love-poet, and his treatment of love is unique in many … Read more
Tennyson, An Unrivalled Lyrical Poet: Tennyson is the greatest lyrical poet between Shelley and Swinburne. He is an unrivalled lyrical genius of his age. He was endowed with all those qualities which made him the supreme lyric poet of his country. Instead of remaining a singer voicing forth the subjective feelings that welled in his … Read more
Tennyson’s Conceiving Nature’s Beauty and Sublimity : Wordsworth was the high priest of Nature. He conceived of Nature as a living force and in his belief each and every object of Nature had a soul of its own. Nature could be better teacher of humanity than books. Wordsworth found in Nature a beautitude and joy. … Read more
Introduction: It is a charge against the whole range of the Victorian poetry that it is imitative and derivative in character. G. D. Klingopulos brings to our notice in his essay The Victorian Scene this derivative character of the Victorian poetry and its dependence on the poetry of the Romantic poets. He says, “There is … Read more
Introduction: In his own times Tennyson was built up into a legend. His popularity amounted almost to hero-worship. He was surrounded by a halo of adoration. As Long observes, “For full half century, he was the voice of England, loved and honoured as a man and a poet, not simply by a few discerning critics, … Read more
Introduction of the Poem: “The Lady of Shalott” was first published in the volume of 1833. It was published again in the Volume of 1842, in a much revised and improved form. The changes which Tennyson made show that the poet’s art has matured considerably, and he has acquired full control over his material. The … Read more