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Alfred tennyson's ulysses essay
The life and career of Alfred Tennyson
Alfred tennyson's ulysses essay
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Alfred Tennyson gifted the Victorian Era, and the literary world with two iconic poems. The author explored the themes of personal development and culture clash in one of his most famous poems, “Ulysses”. Tennyson also discovered and analyzed the themes of love and death through his renowned and eminent poem, “Tears Idle, Tears”. The poet was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire in 1809 in the East Lindy district of England. Tennyson experienced numerous amounts of difficulties in his childhood and growing adolescent phases that spilled into his adult life. These trials and tribulations became a foundation and source of inspiration for Tennyson, who used them as a stimulus and catalyst to aide his literary progress and ideas. Two of the most prominent poems that Tennyson wrote were “Ulysses “and “Tears Idle, Tears”. These poems defined the peak of his literary endeavor and symbolized the struggles that Tennyson had experienced in his life. Throughout time readers have been able to distinguish a direct correlation between his life journey and the poems he crafted.
During Tennyson’s childhood and maturing adulthood he endured tempestuous events which altered the course of his life and the essence of literary career. The death of his best friend, Hallem, threw him into a phase of darkness, solitude and despair. It was “a period referred to as his ‘”ten years silence”‘(Napierkowski and Rose 270); he was extremely affected by the death “for it shattered all his life and made him desire to die rather than live” (Napierkowski and Rose 270). The potent emotion surrounding death was modeled in his poem Tears Idle, Tears. The poet identified “the source of his poems emotion as rising from his feelings about the death of his college friend…H...
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"Ulysses." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 277-293. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
"Tears, Idle Tears." Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary Ruby. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 219-231. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 May 2014
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The poems message reflects the Victorian ethics and the Homeric era. The poem is based on Ulysses return to his home on the island of Ithaca. On his return he is disappointed to abandon battle as he, "cannot rest from travel" Tennyson astounds the reader by breaking down their stereotypical thoughts of Ulysses, as being a strong, heroic, and fair character. Instead, he installs the idea of a bitter Ulysses, one which is, "Match'd with an aged wife," This thought shocks the reader.
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"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal [but] which the reader recognizes as his own." (Salvatore Quasimodo). There is something about the human spirit that causes us to rejoice in shared experience. We can connect on a deep level with our fellow man when we believe that somehow someone else understands us as they relate their own joys and hardships; and perhaps nowhere better is this relationship expressed than in that of the poet and his reader. For the current assignment I had the privilege (and challenge) of writing an imitation of William Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 87". This poem touched a place in my heart because I have actually given this sonnet to someone before as it then communicated my thoughts and feelings far better than I could. For this reason, Sonnet 87 was an easy choice for this project, although not quite so easy an undertaking as I endeavored to match Shakespeare’s structure and bring out his themes through similar word choice.
As a child Tennyson was profoundly influenced by the poetry of Byron and Scott, Romantic poets celebrated for their presentations of emotional or psychological issues through natural imagery. This influence can be plainly seen in his poetry, none so much so as in ‘Mariana’ where he uses Keatsian descriptions of the surroundings to describe a woman’s state of mind.
Mays, Kelly. "Poems for Further Study." Norton Introduction to Literature. Eleventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 2013. 771-772. Print.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater is known as one of the greatest poetic figure of the Victorian Age. Tennyson started writing poetry at an early age and at the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000 line poem. His poems consisted of medieval legends, myths, and everyday life and nature. When he was appointed laureate a position he held for 42 years, the longest of any laureate, he wrote about historical events and one of his famous works was Ode on the Death of Duke of Wellington. Three of his poems that I chose and stood out above all others are Mariana, In Memoriam A.H.H., and Ulysses. Mariana was Tennyson’s widely acclaimed in which he creates imagery from the environment to express a woman’s emotional state. In Memoriam A.H.H. describes Tennyson’s recollections of the moments he shared with Arthur to whom it is dedicated to furthermore it focuses on the depressed time the Victorians went through. And Ulysses serves as an aftermath of In Memoriam A.H.H. of Tennyson finally moving on from the grief he experienced after losing Arthur. All three poems connect with Tennyson’s life each serving as a step towards Tennyson’s greatness and his status as one of the most influential poets of the Victorian era.
Tennyson was born in 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England; the fourth of twelve children (Everett). After leaving grammar school in 1820, his father, a rector, managed to give him a broad literary education, despite difficult conditions at home (“Tennyson…”). As a precocious young man, Alfred learned to write in styles of John Milton, and Alexander Pope, as well as established an exceptional understanding of Elizabethan dramatic verse (Everett). William Wallace Robson says that by Tennyson’s early teens, “Lord Byron was a dominant influence on the young Tennyson” (Robson). Such an influence gave way to the young Tennyson’s The Devil and the Lady, a previously unpublished collection of poems, later published in 1930 with clear inspiration from his favorite childhood writers. Perhaps Tennyson’s father should have been an English teacher instead of a clergyman.
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001. 123-154.
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
Anger becomes a bridge, a connection to the deceased loved one. This connection made from anger feels better than nothing. According to Kübler-Ross, "When the first stage of denial cannot be maintained any longer, it is replaced by feelings of anger, rage, envy, and resentment'" (43). Anger can be seen subtly throughout Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “
Memoriam, The Mutable Locus Amoenus and Consolation in Tennyson's In. "Robert Bernard Hass." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (1998): 669-687.