This thesis examines the work of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and the treatment of religion in his works during the increasingly scientific Victorian Era.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Princess: A Medley has posed interpretative difficulties for readers since its 1847 debut. Critics, editors, and artists contemporary with Tennyson as well as in this century have puzzled over the poem's stance on the issue of the so-called Woman Question. Treating Tennyson as the first reader of the poem yields an understanding of the title character, Princess Ida, as an ambassador of Tennyson's optimistic and evolutionary views of human development and links his work to that of visionary educators of nineteenth-century England. Later artists, however, produced adaptations of the poem that twisted its hopefulness into satirical commentary, reduced its complexities to ease the task of reading, and put it to work in various causes, many ranged against the improvement of women's condition. In particular, a series of editions carried The Princess into various nations, classrooms, and homes, promoting interpretations that often obscure Tennyson's cautious optimism.

This thesis examines the nature of identity and the problems implicit in attempts to affirm it within the context of nineteenth century modernity. By exploring a number of texts from Romanticism to the fin de siecle, it can be. seen that autonomous and coherent identity is not a stable entity. Drawing upon Rene Descartes'work on constructions of selfhood as a starting point, these ideas can be detected in an assessment of identity's alter ego - the disidentical self which is characterised by masks, disguises, madness, pathological behaviour, criminality and addiction. Examples of such paradigms for disidentity can be found in a variety of cultural texts and genres throughout the century, from the self-consciously 'high' poetry of Matthew Arnold, Alfred Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to the popular Gothic novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. These metaphorisations of a crisis for identity in the nineteenth century are reflected in the analyses of insanity by physicians such as W.A.F. Browne and Henry Maudsley, prominent cultural critics such as Arthur Hallam and Amold, and the degeneration theorists of the late nineteenth century. Much of the project is shaped by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' assessment of modernity found in The Communist Manifesto, in particular their descriptions of nineteenth century socio-cultural topographies as fluid and vaporous. Stable identity is effectively threatened from a plethora of directions, including the Orient, criminality, sexual deviancy, scientific discovery and accelerated social change. Taking into consideration the many different ways in which identity can be problematised in the nineteenth century, three important sites of disidentification have been chosen for the purposes of this argument. Chapter one examines the split-personality, chapter two religious madness, and chapter three addiction. Each chapter demonstrates that within the conditions of nineteenth century modernity, the fragility and consequent fragmentation of individual identity is evoked in many different manifestations.

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L’œuvre poétique d’Alfred Tennyson est cyclique. La répétition des mots, des thèmes et des personnages lui confère une dimension autoréférentielle. Le retour des refrains crée un effet de ressassement formel. Cette œuvre se concentre sur elle-même au point de s’affranchir des formes et des genres poétiques existants, à la recherche d’un langage qui lui est propre. L’écriture se prend elle-même pour objet et pour fin. La mélancolie au cœur de bien des poèmes devient un prétexte à écrire toujours plus car la dynamique de la sublimation mélancolique s’apparente au fonctionnement même du langage poétique, déploiement de signes autour d’un centre absent. Derrière la magie de la griserie du verbe, point pourtant le regard critique du poète qui se pose sur la société de son temps et se cristallise autour de la figure de la femme. Le texte poétique se redéfinit finalement comme un espace de différence où se donne à voir et à entendre la capacité (pro)créatrice d’une écriture « au féminin ». / Alfred Tennyson’s poetical work is cyclical. The recurrence of words, themes and characters confers a self-referential dimension on it. The return of refrains creates a sense of formal repetitiousness. As they concentrate on their own working, the texts free themselves from existing poetical forms and genres, looking for a language of their own. The recurring theme of melancholy becomes a pretext to keep writing: the sublimation of the impossible work of mourning reveals something of the essence of poetical language as the proliferation of signs around a void. The poet’s critical vision of his society nevertheless appears behind his delight in the resources of language as he focuses on feminine characters. The poetical text is finally redefined as a space of difference where the feminine (pro)creative power of Tennyson’s poetical language can be heard and seen.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2001. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2824. Typescript. Abstract appears on leaf [2]. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84).

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: John P. Farrell and Adam Zachary Newton. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is a study of themes and genre in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. I have not attempted to present a survey of the body of critisicm on the cycle, nor have I attempted a comprehensive comparison of the poem with any of Tennyson's sources. The first chapter is based on A. Fowler's study of genres and I follow the implications of his work in my reading of the Idylls. Tennyson blends various generic strands in his cycle, in particular allegory, epic, dramatic monologue and the Alexandrian idyll, to create a complex psychological allegory of epic scope which both draws on traditional genres and extends them. I believe the Idylls should be read as a cycle and in the order in which Tennyson finally presented them; the ordering process is as much part of the creative process as the actual act of composition. I have adopted Priestley's sensible division of the twelve poems which he says "falls naturally into three groups of four, corresponding closely to the three acts of modern drama" (1960, p.252-254)" The second chapter begins the sequential examination of the first four "spring" and "summer" poems beginning with the symbolic The Coming of Arthur. This idyll begins Tennyson's Arthurian mythopoeia, creating a poetic kingdom of the mind. The "act" closes with the Geraint and Enid idylls, all four works in this section ending happily. The third chapter deals with the idylls which plot the corrupting and ever-widening influence of the adulterous relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere, one cause of the destruction of the institution of the Round Table. Other causes of the demise of Arthur's order are the pernicious influences of the evil Vivien and Modred and the meaningless and sterile spirituality that prompts the quest of The Holy Grail. The last four idylls chart the final collapse of Arthur's realm, the utter disillusionment of individual idealism - personified by Pelleas, an anachronistic spring figure who appears in Camelot's bleak and hostile winter - and the complete social decay which is demonstrated by the fiasco of The Last Tournament. The tragic denouement of the cycle, on both individual and social levels, is evident in Guinevere, in which Arthur's wretched and traitorous queen understands Arthur's vision, but too late to save Camelot from ruin. In the final framing idyll, The Passing of Arthur, Tennyson's myth is elevated to the level of universal significance, the Idylls of the King becoming "not the history of one man or one generation but of a whole cycle of generations" (Memoir, ii, p.127).

From Preface: A reader looking to this study for a charting of the diverse religious views held by Tennyson at different periods in his life may be disappointed. My primary concern has been not with religious forms, but with the numinous impulse. However, though I approached the topic with a completely open mind, I find my own Christian convictions have been strengthened through the study of Tennyson's poetry. As the title indicates, I have not attempted to deal with the plays. To explore both the poetry and the plays in a study of this length would have been impossible. I have perhaps been somewhat unorthodox in attempting to combine several disciplines, especially since I cannot claim to be a specialist in the areas concerned. However, I felt it necessary to approach the subject from a number of points of view, and to see to what extent the results could be said to converge on some sort of central "truth". When I have despaired of being able to do justice to a particular aspect within the imposed limits, I have sometimes found comfort in the words of Alan Sinfield (The Language of Tennyson's "In Memoriam", p.211): "We can only endeavour continually to approach a little closer to the central mystery; the ma j or advances will be infrequent, but most attempts should furnish one or two hints which others will develop. "