Of Tennyson’s In Memoriam, T. S. Eliot wrote that ‘its faith is a poor thing, but its doubt is a very intense experience,’ while Christopher Ricks wrote, similarly, that its ‘poems of most intense feeling…tend to be the darkest.’ Neither of these...

Tithonus, written by Lord Tennyson in 1833, is a poem about a Trojan prince who is granted immortality. Tennyson wrote this poem as a dramatic monologue so that any criticism of his Romantic style would be directed to the characters themselves....

They say that assiduous work fuels the best and happiest lives; but, what if work becomes that life? This immense level of work removes the possibility of any facet of life that does not include labor. Lord Alfred Tennyson in his poem, “The...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” acts as an elegy for his best friend, Arthur Hallam, while also helping him to process his decades-long grief. While the poem’s length can cause readers to focus on certain memorable selections from it, T.S....

While Tennyson has been labeled "The Poet of the People," and has enjoyed much success as a writer of "public poetry," his poems are ironically very private. Much of his success may be attributed to his gift for making his poetry appeal to a large...

Throughout Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam, the speaker (assumed to be the poet himself) battles with the grief and confusion caused by the untimely death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Over the course of the poem, indeed over the seventeen...

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

the wanderer, harried for years on end,

after he plundered the stronghold

on the proud height of Troy.

He saw the townlands

and learned the minds of many...

Poets often revise and re-revise their work, as it can be difficult to fully express the emotions they want to invoke in the reader. Just a change of one word can change the entire meaning of a line, and poetry's usual brevity requires every...

Discuss Tennyson’s representations of the artist figure and his conceptions of art, think about issues of esoteric isolation versus political or emotional connection.

In his poem The Palace of Art, Tennyson portrays an artist attempting to build an...

Both Lord Alfred Tennyson’s dramatic monologue, “Ulysses,” and Ezra Pound’s 1912 translation of the Old English dramatic monologue “The Seafarer” depict a man’s musings about seaward journeys. Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in the wake of his best...

The Victorian concept of masculinity is one caught up a series of interrelated metaphors relating to the empire and national identity. Throughout the Victorian corpus there are a number of texts that create a metaphorical relationship between...

Both Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” involve women artists as their main characters—The Lady of Shalott weaves artful, colorful webs and the narrator in “The Bloody Chamber” is a talented...

“In Memoriam” is a lyric elegy written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in remembrance of his dear friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam’s death’s effect on Tennyson becomes clear throughout this elegy as the reader is exposed to not only Tennyson’s...

Enclosure or entrapment is a prominent recurring mode throughout the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This essay largely focuses in the implementation and development of enclosure in The Lady of Shalott and then explores the relationships and...

Tennyson’s reclusive speaker is shown to condemn the actions of both people and society as a whole within ‘Maud’; many of the speaker’s social criticisms are shown to be valid social critiques of the Victorian age, in contrast to his sometimes...

In the opening line of Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters,” Odysseus issues the rallying call of “Courage!” to his men as they head forward in their trajectory towards a strange and unnamed “land.” For these weary wanderers, this place is clearly...

Although it is commonly understood that God created the natural world, Nature is often depicted as a force working in opposition to God and His creation. In lyric 56 of the poem In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Nature seems to have conquered...

‘Mariana’ is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson which was published in 1830. This was an early stage of the Victorian era, a time when there was a plethora of social upheavals in England and Europe. As a composition, 'Mariana' is a beautiful yet...

‘Break break break’ is a poem that was published in 1842, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores Tennyson’s feelings of loss concerning the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. The poem syncretises the perpetual cycle of nature with the...

"The Lady of Shalott" was published in 1832, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores a series of themes that trigger the reader to question the societal prejudices that occurred during Queen Victoria’s reign. In order to stimulate thought,...

Tennyson's The Lotos-Eaters is a poem which can be interpreted as having several meanings. While it can be understood as a lament for masculinity in peril, it can also be interpreted as expressing regret for the mariners' indulgence in forbidden...

In Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”, he brings into question the differing perspectives that each individual possesses. By describing the reality of the sailors before the consumption of the Lotos flower and after the ingestion of the...

Winston Churchill said that ‘the truth is incontrovertible’. This statement construes ‘truth’ as an absolute concept, where there is only one truth, and anything else is by definition a non-truth. Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Thackeray’s ‘Going to...

In presenting the concept of the closed door, it advocates the very opposite idea that, once, the door was open. With this knowledge there comes a possibility that perhaps a closed door can be opened again, suggesting that there are two sides to a...