Lord Alfred Tennyson: Study Of The Poet

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Study Of The Poet

Name: Parmar Dipali K.

Roll No. : 26

Assignment Sem. 2

Email Id: dipaliparmar247@gmail.com

Submitted to: The Department of English, MKBU.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Alfred Tennyson was a poet of Great Britain and Ireland during the time of Queen Victoria and remains one of the most popular Britain poets. Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in England. He was appointed laureate at the death of Wordsworth, in 1850. He was almost alone who held the office. He filled the importance of his place and honored it. For nearly half a century, Tennyson was not only a man and a poet, but was a voice of a whole people. He was one who was expressing people’s doubts and faith, griefs and their triumphs through excellent melody of his poems. In the wonderful variety of his verse, he has expressed all the qualities of England’s greatest poets. The Dreaminess of Spenser, majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake and Coleridge, the melody of Keats and Shelley, the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron,- all these qualities are evident on successive pages of Tennyson’s poetry. The only thing lacking is the dramatic power of the Elizabethans. Tennyson was as remarkable as Pope of the eighteenth century. As a poet he is probably the most representative literary man of the Victorian era.

 Q    About his Life:

          Tennyson’s life is remarkable one because from the beginning to the end he seems to have been devoted to the only one impulse, which is poetry. He had no large remarkable experiences, no great successes or reverses, no business cares or public offices. For sixty-six years, from the appearance of the Poems by two Brothers, in 1827, until his death in 1892, he studied and practiced his art continually and exclusively. Tennyson was naturally shy, retiring, indifferent to men, hating noise and publicity, loving to be alone with nature, like Wordsworth.

            Tennyson was born in the rectory of Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809.

An illustration by W. E. F. Britten showing Somersby Rectory, where Tennyson was raised and began writing.

            The sweet influences of his early natural surroundings can better understood from his early poems than from any biography. He was one of the twelve children of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, a scholarly clergyman, and his wife Elizabeth Fytche, a gentle, lovable woman. It is interesting to note that most of these children were poetically motivated, and that two of the brothers, Charles and Frederick, gave far greater promise than did Alfred.

            At the age of seven he went to his grandmother’s house at Louth, to attend a famous grammar school at that place. In his school life he has not so much complaint against the roughness of the boys who had frightened Cowper, but he has complaint against the brutality of the teachers, who put over the school door a worthless Latin inscription translating Solomon’s cruel advice about rod and the child. Which was as below;

“He who keeps back his rod is unkind to his son: the loving father gives punishment with care.”

Common English Bible

Proverbs 13:24 (CEB)

After four years of unsatisfactory school life, Tennyson returned home, and was fitted for the university by his scholarly father. With his brothers he wrote many verses, and his first effort appeared in a little volume called Poems by Two Brothers, in 1827. The next year he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became the center of a brilliant circle of friends, chief of whom was the young poet Arthur Henry Hallam. 

Statue of Lord Tennyson in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge.

At the university Tennyson soon became known for his poetic ability, and two years after of his entrance he gained the prize of the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for his poem called “Timbuctoo”. Soon after winning this honour Tennyson published his first signed work, called Poems Chiefly Lyricalin 1830, which nevertheless contained the germ of all his later poetry. One of the most noticeable things in this volume is the influence which Byron used over the poets of his early days; and because of the same romantic influence Tennyson and his friend Hallam sailed away to Spain, with the idea to join army of insurgents against King Ferdinand. It was considered a fiasco, suggesting a great Duke of York and his ten thousand men, − “he marched them up a hill, one day; he marched them down again.” But it is said that;

“Experience is the teacher of all things.”

By, Julius Caesar

Here also, experience which Tennyson got was not without its value. The deep impression which the wild beauty of Pyreness(Mountain of Spain) made upon the young poet’s mind is reflected clearly in his poem The Death of Cenone.

Location of Pyreness in Spain

Beautiful mountains of Pyreness, Spain

(Few lines of the poem Cenone)

The Death of Cenone

There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier

Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.

The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,

Puts fourth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,

And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand

The lawns and meadow-hedges midway down

Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars

The long brook fallen thro’ the clov’n ravine

In cataract after cataract to the sea.

In 1831 Tennyson left the university without taking his degree. The reasons for this step are not clear; but the family was poor, and poverty may have played a large part in his determination. His father died a few months later; but, by a generous arrangement with the new rector, the family retained the rectory at Somersby, and here, for nearly six years, Tennyson lived in a retirement. He read and studied widely, cultivated an intimate acquaintance with nature, thought deeply on the problems suggested by the Reform Bill which was then disturbing England, and during his leisure hours he wrote poetry. The first fruits of this retirement appeared, late in 1832, in a wonderful little volume bearing the simple name Poems. As the work of a youth only twenty-three, this book is remarkable for the variety and melody of its verse. Among these we read some poems with delight like;                                                     

Palace of Art

The Lotos Eaters

A Dream of Fair Women

The Miller’s Daughter

Cenone

            The Lady of Shalott   etc.

            The critics of the Quarterly, had brutally criticized Tennyson’s earlier work. The effect of this harsh criticism; and when his friend Hallam died, in 1833, Tennyson was rushed into a period of gloom and sorrow. The sorrow and grief could be seen in his poem;

Break, break, break…

“Break, break, break, Onthy cold grey stones, O Sea!”

            This poem was his first published elegy for his friend. The depressing influence of the harsh and unjust criticism is suggested in Merline and The Gleam which the reader will understand only after he read Tennyson’s biography.

            For nearly ten years after Hallam’s death Tennyson published nothing. But though silent, he continued to write poetry, and it was in these sad wandering days that he began his immortal In Memoriam and his Idylls of the King. In 1842 his friends persuaded him to give his works to the world, and with some hesitation he published his Poems. The success of his work was almost instant, and we can appriciate the favor when we read Ulysses, Morte d’Arthur, Dora, The Gardener’s Daughter etc. From this time Tennyson’s confidence increased and he maintained his place as a best known and best loved poet in England.

            The year 1850 was a happy one for Tennyson. He was appointed poet laureate, to succeed Wordsworth; and he married Emily Sellwood for whom he writes;

“Her whose gentle will has changed my fate

And made my life a perfumed altar flame,”

            After the publication of In Memorium, he brought the house Farringford with his earnings, in the Isle of Wight, and setteled in the first permenent home he had known since he left the rectory at Somersby.

The house Farringford, Isle of Wight.

For the remaining forty years of his life he lived, like Wordsworth, “in the stillness of a great peace,” writing steadily, and enjoying the friendship of a large number of people, some distinguished, some obscure, from the kindly and sympathetic Victoria to the servants of his own farm. All of these he called with equal sincerity his friends, and to each one he was the same man, simple, strong, kindly, and noble. Loving solitude and hating publicity as he did, numerous tourists from both sides of the ocean, who sought him out in his retreat and insisted upon seeing him, made his life at times intolerable. In this peaceful time escaping from popularity, he made his home Farringford for the greater part of the year.

            His labor during these years and his marvelous freshness and youthfulness of feeling are best understood by a glance at the contents of his complete works. Inferior poems, like The princess, which was written in the first flush of his success, and his dramas, which are written against the advice of his best friends, may easily be criticized; but the bulk of his verse shows an astonishing originality and vigor to the very end. He died very quietly at Aldworth, with his family about him in the moonlight, and beside him a volume of Shakespeare, open at the dirge in Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.

           

The strong and noble spirit of his life is reflected in one of his best known poems, Crossing the Bar, which was written in his eighty-first year, and which he desired should be placed at the end of his collected works:

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

                                               

                                    But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,

                                                Too full for sound and foam,

                                When that which drew from out the boundless deep

                                                Turns again home.

                                    Twilight and evening bell,

                                                And after that the dark!

                                    And may there be no sadness of farewell,

                                                When I embark;

                                   

                                    For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

                                                The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

            When I have crost the bar.

 Q    About his Works:

          It’s Important to note down two things when we are studying Tennyson’s works:

1) Tennyson’s poetry is not so much to be studied as to be read and appreciated.

2) We should by all means begin to get acquainted with Tennyson in the days of our youth.

Tennyson is for enjoyment, for inspiration, rather than for instruction. Only youth can fully appreciate him. Tennyson’s poetry, is to be eternally young, like Adam in Paradise Lost, to find every morning a new world, fresh, wonderful, inspiring, as if just from the hands of God.

Early Poems, and Dramas:

          Tennyson’s earlier works show too much influence of Byron’s works. In dramatic works he wrote seven, his great being to present a large part of the history of England in a series of dramas. Becket is one of the best of these works and met with considerable favor on the stage; but like all the others, it indicates that Tennyson lacked the dramatic power and the humor necessary for a successful playwright.

The Princess, and Maud:

Among remaining poems there is such a wide variety. The Princess, a Medley (1847), a long poem of over three thousand lines of blank verse, is Tennyson’s answer to the question of woman’s rights and woman’s sphere, which was then, strongly agitating the public mind. A few songs, like Tears Idle Tears, Bugle Song, and Sweet and Low, from the most delightful part of this poem, is hardly up to the standard of the poet’s later work.

Maud (1855) is what is called in literature monodrama, telling the story of a lover who passes from morbidness to ecstasy, then to anger and murder, followed by insanity and recovery. This was Tennyson’s favourite, and among his friends he read aloud from it more than from any other poem. Its lyrics, like “Come into the Garden, Maud,” make this work favorite among young lovers.

In Memoriam:

            The most loved of all Tennyson’s works is In Memoriam, which, on account of both its theme and its workmanship, is “One of the few immortal names that were not born to die.” The work is about Tennyson’s personal grief at the death of his friend Hallam. He wrote lyric after lyric, inspired by this sad subject, the poet’s grief of humanity mourning for its dead and questioning its immortality took possession of him.

            Gradually poem became an expression, first, of universal doubt, and then of universal faith, a faith which rests ultimately not on reason or philosophy, but on the soul’s instinct for immortality. The immortality of human love is the theme of the poem.

Idylls of the King:

            The Idylls of the King ranks among the greatest of Tennyson’s later works. Its general subject is the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his knights of The Round Table, and the chief source of its material is Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur. Here, in this mass of beautiful legends, is certainly the subject of a great national epic; yet after four hundred years, during which many poets have used the material, the great epic is still unwritten. Milton and Spenser considered this material very carefully and use it in a great epic.

English Idyls:

            Entirely different in spirit is another collection of poems called English Idyls, which began in the Poems of 1842, and which Tennyson intended should reflect the ideals of widely different types of English life. Of these varied poems, Dora, The Gardener’s Daughter, Ulysses, Locksley Hall and Sir Galahad are the best; but all are worthy of study. One of the most famous of this series is Enoch Arden (1864), in which Tennyson turns from mediaeval knights, from lords, heroes, and fair ladies, to find the material for true poetry among the lowly people that make up the bulk of English life.

Q    Characteristics of Tennyson’s Poetry:

            If we attempt to sum up the quality of Tennyson, as shown in all these works, the task is difficult one; but three stand out more or less plainly.

1. Tennyson is essentially the artist. No other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or with such singleness of purpose.

2. Like all the great writers of his age, he is emphatically a teacher, often a leader. In the preceding age, as the result of the turmoil produced by the French Revolution, lawlessness was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in literature.

3. Tennyson’s theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of order, − of law in the physical world, producing evolution, and of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect man.

References

·       Long, William J., English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World. Stamford: Connecticut.

·       http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson

· http://www.google.co.in/searchsite=webhp&tdm=isch&source=hp&ei=_f6cVq_jOJaKuASN2puoDw&q=Alfred+Tennyson

To Evaluate my Assignment click on this image.