Tennyson's "Enoch Arden": A Victorian Best-Seller

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) has often been considered a particularly British writer in part as his official post as Poet Laureate inevitably committed him to a certain amount of patriotic writing. This volume focuses on his impact on the continent, presenting a major scholarly analysis of Tennyson’s wider reception in different areas of Europe. It considers reader and critical responses and explores the effect of his poetry upon his contemporaries and later writers, as well as his influence upon illustrators, painters and musicians. The leading international contributors raise questions of translation and publication and of the choices made for this purpose along with the way in which his ideas and style influenced European writing and culture. Tennyson’s reputation in Anglophone countries is now assured, following a decline in the years after his death. This volume enables us to chart the changes in Tennyson’s European reputation during the later 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Reviews – Presentations Joseph Phelan, “Lacking the English ear”, TLS, 5 April 2017: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/tennyson-in-europe/

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.

Tennyson’s Poems New Textual Parallels

Proceeding - International Modernism and Postmodernism Studies Conference, 2022

The Victorian era was dominated by novels rather than poetry or drama. However, the poetry and poets of the Victorian Age were respected and considered true artists at the time. They were celebrated much by their contemporaries and audience. In this study, three voices from the period representing the time and its conventions are analysed in terms of their general characteristics and contribution to nineteenth-century English literature as it paved the way for modern English poetry: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Tennyson, the first of these writers, is a figure of transition from Romanticism to nineteenth-century English poetry. Taking his inspiration from the leading Romantic poets, Tennyson used the Romantics' melancholic style and emphasised the English language's musical quality in poetic usage. Reading and analysing Browning’s poetry is more demanding. In terms of style and themes, Browning could be labelled as a “proto-modernist” in that his stylish verses and experimentative attitude made him unique. With Gerard Manley Hopkins, 19th-century poetry becomes modern. He uses different rhythms and stress structures. He continued the tradition of short lyric poems with a different approach that marked the modernist turn in poetry. These poets represent a connection from Romantic traditions to Modernist poetry. This work analyses a poem from each poet outlining their and the century’s characteristics as a transition from Romanticism to Modernism.

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.

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.

Academic Studies in Social Sciences, 2021

Lord Alfred Tennyson was considered a truly Victorian poet because his poems reflected the spirit of the age. He owes his immense popularity to his works that mirrored the tendencies, passions, problems and philosophy of his age which he wove together with the techniques and style peculiar to romantic poetry: “Of course, Tennyson's position as a descendant of the Romantic poets has been noted often enough, but only in a rather blinkered way, in terms of specific influences, imitations, and sources” (Ball, 7). His early works are reflective of romantic traits that stemmed from the popularity of Keats in Cambridge where Tennyson first read Keats’ poems (Grendon 286). His works echo the Victorian society’s critique of inaction and idleness and celebrated action. He reflected hopelessness, loneliness, pessimism, and melancholy dominant in the Victorian era in his works, yet his works have a tinge of his own optimistic emotions. Despite going through a troubled childhood because of his father’s physical as well as mental problems and the untimely death of his close friend, he never lost hope entirely as evident in his poems that convey the need to persevere. Furthermore, the restless Victorian spirit yearning for knowledge, adventure, discovery, exploration, and expansion is reverberated in his works.