Alfred Lord Tennyson's Maud Essay

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Recommended: Discuss the theme of death in the poem of Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Maud (1855), the speaker confronts the shameful fate of dead remains and evaluates the role of nonliving materials such as hair, bones, shells, and rocks. Although critics rarely comment on the geological process in the poem, in-depth analysis of Maud reveals an underlying message about purpose and fate through fossilization. By analyzing Tennyson’s background, experiences, and lines in Maud, I argue that Maud is a “selving” poem as the speaker questions what happens to his remains and his legacy after he is gone. Additionally, the poem is a critique on how society devalues the living out of greed. To achieve this message, Tennyson utilizes his experience and studies of geological processes and fossilization to create a narrative out of the past for the present. …show more content…

In his work Tennyson and Geology (1985), Dennis R. Dean claims that Tennyson appeared at ease with the geological world (Dean 21). However, an analysis of Maud reveals that it “gravitates towards the ground,” meaning that the poem concerns the relics of life and the agents of change that affect all matter. Influenced by his reading of geology, especially Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, Tennyson examines the fossilisation processes that result in the incorporation of dead remains and living organisms into the geological system (Geric 59). Tennyson’s tropology in Maud is mainly geological; however, the text embraces a general conception of remains in regard to what the dead have left behind such as the ring of hair that Maud’s brother wears. These remains are readable relics and fragments that allow the speaker to recreate the past as a description of the present (Geric

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