Discussion of Faith in Victorian Poetry

Tennyson's poetry can be seen in his treatment of and approach to Nature. Like Shelley, he presents the various aspects of Nature with a scientific accuracy and precision of detail. Influenced by the evolutionary theory, he discards the traditional idea of a benevolent and motherly Nature, and brings out her fiercer aspects as well. He also finds Nature 'red in tooth and claw', and shows the cruelty perpetrated in the form of the struggle for existence. His scientific temper blunts his sensitiveness to the soothing charms of Nature. Tennyson is a true representative of his Age, who voices the various feelings, sentiments, ideals and trends as well as social and moral concerns of his Age. He cherishes the values and ideals of his Age, but he also protests against those of them that he finds to be wrong or unsuitable for people. Tennyson's poetry contains the most faithful reflection of, and offers the best commentary on, the life, thoughts and beliefs of the Victorian Age.

As frail fearful human beings, we often ask ourselves questions which we couldn't answer, those which leave us doubting for a certain duration of time or even without finding the answers to those questions. The prime question about human existence is that if there's really life after death. We often ask ourselves if there's really a paradise or a garden that we will be situated after we leave this earth or if it's all just a void. But even how we try to find answer to that, there's really no one who came back to tell us what's waiting on the other side and it leaves us fearful and doubting for what would be the outcome once we're conquered by death. Religion is a relief though because since we are young they thought us to do good things and we will be taken to heaven after our death. Not only religion actually, but many tribes or group of people came up with their own version of heaven. But as we grow old and our society changed from native beliefs into our modern thinking, we slowly fear what death may incur, because of what we've observed from science. The reality of being dead and the nothingness slowly creeps into our being that we fear it more than anything else. But with the fear of our end, we start to live our lives. Because of the doubts and uncertainties, the fear gives us a boost to live every moment in this short lives and enjoy them while it lasts. Not knowing makes us doubtful but it also gives us a certain optimism to give everything we have. These two poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson shows the two opposing ideas of a man about death. Both of the poems discusses the optimism and pessimism of the personas and of the writer. These thoughts are actually shared by all of us. We also have these ideas when we think of death on our idle times. We have always this fear, but with it we also form a kind of optimism. It is interesting to know how a person can easily change his views about a certain thing/idea. Tennyson shows his dual personality of being an optimistic and pessimistic at the same time as revealed by his works. The idea of death is a sensitive topic for most

Tennyson’s Poems New Textual Parallels

The Oswald Review an International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English, 2007

Advances in Social Sciences and Management – ISSN 3049-7108 , 2024

Literary investigation of selfhood has long reflected human identity and introspection. Alfred Lord Tennyson's self-portraits are examined in this article. Tennyson's introspective lyrics illuminated Victorian consciousness during immense social and intellectual change. This article examines Tennyson's complex self-representation in selected poems. The essay places Tennyson's poetry in the context of Victorian literature and ideas, stressing selfhood's changing roles. It examines Tennyson's introspective study of emotions, wants, doubts, and fears. According to Tennyson's poems, the self's relationship to nature, society, and history is examined. A thematic analysis of seclusion, nostalgia, and existential pondering illuminates Tennyson's interest in the self's place in the ever-changing universe. It explores Tennyson's approach to memory and identity, showing how his poetic personas traverse the complex relationship between past and present identities. We conclude with Tennyson's poetics of change, where the self transforms and renews in the face of life's obstacles and uncertainties. This article illuminates Tennyson's literary language and influences on Victorian selfhood through attentive readings and critical analysis. It shows how Tennyson's verses reflect the Victorian self's complexity, inconsistencies, and existential aspirations; they resonate beyond time and invite readers to consider their identities in the ever-changing tapestry of human experience.

Lord Alfred Tennyson was Poet Laureate of Great Britain during Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets of the Victorian era. One of his most famous poem is “In Memoriam A.H.H”. The poem is divided in 131 cantos and a Prologue and Epilogue. The poem was written over a span of 17 years. It is some sort of a requiem for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died of cerebral haemorrhage in 1833. Tennyson's lyrics portrays his intense agony on the loss of a friend, his initial tone in the poem is that of depression and anxiety which later changes to hope as he renconciles with the reality and views death as a transition period to a higher world. The poem contains intricate religious imagery, specifically on the theme of redemption and salvation. It is interesting that Tennyson uses these religious imageries and his own personal religious beliefs to counter scientific claims put forward by eminent scholars of the age. In these regards, his poem might be said to be in tune with the Romantic literary movement, which was one of the major Counter-Enlightenment literary force of that era. His importance to the human soul as opposed to the scientific understanding of the human being clearly illustrates the bias of his mind against the scientific community. In many passages of the poem he criticizes the cold and calculative scientific understanding of the nature which views death and destruction as a natural process of evolution. The 1830s in Britain saw a new flourish in scientific advancement through industrial revolution and various scientific expedition undertaken by scholars and budding scientists and funded by the government. The various political revolutions in Europe starting from the 1840s proved the fragile political condition of the continent. The scientific expeditions also proved to be a perfect cover for extension of the colonial empire with a scientific understanding and education duly prescribed by the government. Science, or more importantly, “natural philosophy” was used as a tool to understand the nature and environment and also as tool for domination. Two scientific works in paricular, Sir Charles Lyell's “Principles of Geology” and Charles Darwin's “On the Origin of Species” gave the leading edge to science over religion. Science became the new currency for intellectual supremacy and religion began to lose its ground. With religion every metaphysical understanding of human beings lost its ground and the study of humans became the study of man as a complex biological machine. Tennyson found it difficult to cope with the mechanistic understanding of human beings where there is no hope of a salvation or an afterlife. In many parts of the poem Tennyson directly attacks the theory of natural selection. He saw nature as a mindless beast having complete domination over the life and death of humans. The attempt of Tennyson in the poem to find a suitable afterlife for his friend, Hallam, could be read in a broader perspective as a Counter-Enlightenment stance against supremacy of science and empirical knowledge over religion and matters concerning the human soul.

ESC: English Studies in Canada, 1984

neovictorianstudies.com

From the time of his submission of a poem for a literary prize as an adolescent, Tennyson conceived poetry in 'prophetic' terms, and 'Timbuctoo' (1829) engaged him in constructing his role as poetic voice in (and for) the present and in (and for) the future. In this sense, Ulysses's sentence "I am become a name" in the eponymous poem is paradigmatic of Tennyson's approach to his envisaged poetic afterlife. As a writer of poetry, a representative of Victorian thought and a 'brand name' in nineteenth-century literary and cultural market, Tennyson has been constantly subject to adaptations, revisions and intersemiotic translations. Using Harold Bloom's ideas on the inevitability of "misreading" as a driving force in the reception and successive re-creation of poetry, this analysis will try and retrace a 'map' of Tennysonian rewritings with particular reference to 'Tithonus' (1860), 'The Lady of Shalott' (1842), 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' (1854) and In Memoriam (1850) in a wide range of heterogeneous texts, including nostalgic fictional biographies, war movies, science-fiction and fantasy TV serials, teen-ager novels, pop and heavy metal music, crime novels, and experimental postmodern fictions.