By analyzing Tennyson's use of memory in his poetry, this study shows Tennyson as the abiding experimentalist in the use of the poetic memory—through it, he presents his diverse themes in a variety of ways. Discussed in this book are selections from his earliest volumes and “Poems (1842)”, “In Memoriam”, “Maud”, and “Idylls of the King”, which are chosen not only for their rich illustrative variety in the use of memory but also because they span the whole of his poetic career and, therefore, attest to his consistent concern with memory.
Alfred Tennyson was a poet all his life, writing more than a thousand works in virtually every poetic genre. Considered by his Victorian contemporaries the pre-eminent poet of the age, he has become a canonical figure who is widely read and studied today. Consequently, his poems appear on the syllabi of both survey courses in Victorian literature as well as upper-division and graduate-level topics courses that cover Victorian studies or address subjects such as environmental studies, religion, elegiac poetry, and Arthurian literature. This companion makes Tennyson's poetry accessible to contemporary readers by identifying some of the formal elements of the poems, highlighting their relevance to Tennyson's Victorian contemporaries, and explaining their enduring appeal and value. Entries in the companion, organized alphabetically, provide essential details about Tennyson's most anthologized poems, offer suggestions for reading and interpretation, and elucidate unfamiliar historical and literary allusions. Additional entries, a biography of Tennyson, and a selected bibliography of recent criticism offer information about the people, places, events, and issues that influenced Tennyson or were important to him and his contemporaries.
Tennyson s central poem is presented with an extensive introduction that provides background information on the poet and poem as well as an overview of In Memoriam s formal and thematic peculiarities, including Tennyson s use of the stanza and the poem s rhyme scheme."
Tolle Lege, take up and read! These words from St. Augustine perfectly describe the human condition. Reading is the universal pilgrimage of the soul. In reading we journey to find ourselves and to save ourselves. The ultimate journey is reading the Great Books. In the Great Books we find the struggle of the human soul, its aspirations, desires, and failures. Through reading, we find faces and souls familiar to us even if they lived a thousand years ago. The unread life is not worth living, and in reading we may well discover what life is truly about and prepare ourselves for the pilgrimage of life.
Seeking to understand Tennyson's poetry as the work of a man concerned with making and then living up to one of the most famous names in Victorian literature, Anna Barton offers close readings of Tennyson's major works. From his obscure beginning as 'A.T.', one of two anonymous brothers, to the height of his success, when he held the impressive title 'Alfred Lord Tennyson, DCL, Poet Laureate', the development of Tennyson's career took place in a period increasingly aware that a name could command considerable cultural capital. In the marketplace goods were sold on the strength of their brand name; in the press the battle for signed articles was fought and won; and in Victorian drawing rooms young ladies collected the autographs of family and friends and pasted them into scrap books. From his early lyrics to his Arthurian Idylls, Barton argues, the laureate's keen sense of professional identity forced him to grapple with modern concerns about the ethics of print in order to establish his own responsible poetic.
For many decades, R.S. Thomas has been portrayed according to terms that he himself helped to define. Drawing on the poet's status as a passionate defender of the Welsh nation, scholars have followed his lead in emphasising the Welsh credentials and dimensions of his work, tacitly affirming his chosen cultural identity. Chameleon Poet, however, goes against the grain of previous studies by revealing Thomas as profoundly indebted to the English literary canon. Ultimately, Thomas emerges as a classic example of what Keats famously described as the 'chameleon poet', and through this prism S.J. Perry illuminates the various dimensions of his relationship with the literary tradition. Through detailed consideration of Thomas's life and writing and extensive archival research into his reading and correspondence, Perry examines Thomas's early immersion in the work of the English Romantics, through to his discovery of Irish and Scottish writing, his response to key poetic figures, such as Herbert, Tennyson, Edward Thomas and T.S. Eliot, his involvement with the influential journal Critical Quarterly, which inspired a creative dialogue with esteemed contemporaries like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin, and his late engagement with the traditions of the elegy as conceived within Thomas Hardy's Poems of 1912-13. As well as suggesting new readings and associations, this groundbreaking exposition of R.S. Thomas's art forms part of a wider investigation into the nature of the British poetic tradition and archipelagic identity, showing how Thomas's Welshness was in fact a hybrid construct, emerging from his imaginative interaction with the literary cultures of England, Scotland and Ireland as much as those of his homeland.
