My thesis is that many of Tennyson's apparently paranormal experiences are explicable in terms of temporal lobe epilepsy; and that a study of the occurrence, in the work of art, of phenomena associated with these experiences, may be useful in elucidating the workings of the aesthetic imagination. A body of knowledge relevant to paranormal experience in Tennyson's life and work, assembled from both literary and biographical sources, is applied to a Subjective Paranormal Experience Questionnaire, compiled by Professor V.M. Neppe, in order to establish the range of the poet's apparently "psychic" experiences. The information is then analysed in terms of the symptomatology of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and the problems of differential diagnosis are considered. It is shown, by means of close and comparative analyses of a number of poems, that recurring clusters of images in Tennyson's poetry may have their genesis in TLE. These images are investigated in terms of modern research into altered states of consciousness. They are found to be consistent with a "model" of the three stages of trance experience constructed by Professor A.D. Lewis-Williams to account for shamanistic rock art in the San, Coso and Upper Paleolithic contexts. My study of the relevant phenomena in the work of a nineteenth century English poet would seem to offer cross-cultural verification of the applicability of the model to a range of altered-state contexts. This study goes on to investigate some of the psychological processes which may influence the way in which pathology is manifested in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson. But, throughout the investigation, the possible effects of literary precursors and of other art forms are acknowledged. The subjective paranormal phenomena in Tennyson's poems are compared not only with some modern neuropsychiatric cases, but also with those of several nineteenth-century writers who seem to have had similar experiences . These include Dostoevsky and Edward Lear, who are known to have been epileptics, and Edgar Allan Poe. Similarity between some aspects of Tennyson's work and that of various Romantic poets, notably Shelley, is stressed; and it is tentatively suggested that it might be possible to extrapolate from my findings in this study to a more general theory of the "Romantic" imagination.

viii, 214 p. / In this study, I examine the various techniques used by poets to provide consolation. With Tennyson's In Memoriam, I explore the relationship between formal and thematic consolation, i.e., the ways in which the use of formal elements of the poem, particularly rhyme scheme, is an attempt by the poet to attain and offer consolation. Early in his laureateship after the Duke of Wellington's funeral, Tennyson wrote "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," but this poem failed to meet his reading audience`s needs, as did the first major work published after Tennyson was named Poet Laureate: Maud. I argue that form and theme are as inextricably linked in Maud as they are in In Memoriam, and in many ways, Maud revises the type of mourning exhibited in In Memoriam. Later, I examine in greater detail the hallmarks of Victorian mourning. Although most Victorians did not mourn for as long or as excessively as Queen Victoria, the form her mourning took certainly is worth discussion. I argue that we can read Tennyson's "Dedication" to Idylls of the King and his "To the Mourners" as Victorian funeral sermons, each of which offers explicit (and at times, contradictory) advice to the Queen on how to mourn. Finally, I discuss the reactions to Tennyson's death in the popular press. Analyzing biographical accounts, letters, and memorial poems, I argue that Tennyson and his family were invested in the idea of "the good death"; Tennyson needed to die as he had lived--as the great Laureate. / Committee in charge: Richard Stein, Chair; Tres Pyle, Member; Deborah Shapple, Member; Raymond Birn, Outside Member

In its earliest form, the Tristram legend was probably a Celtic folk-tale known in oral tradition as early as the eighth or ninth century. During the early part of the twelfth century it became known in France and Brittany; and there, in the later years of that same century, it was recorded in a lost romance now referred to as the Ur-Tristan. From this source, so it is believed, the earliest extant romances upon the subject were derived. During the twelfth century, two main versions developed—first the version des jongleurs, given in the poems of Béroul and Eilhart von Oberge, and second, the version courtoise given in Thomas's Tristan and some derivatives of it. Among these last, the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, written about 1215, is generally regarded as one of the masterpieces of medieval literature. In the early thirteenth century, the legend was employed in an anonymous romance, the French prose Tristan. In this version, which was greatly influenced by the prose Lancelot cycle, the narrative is so grossly adulterated by the machinery of thirteenth-century courtly romance that the original love story is all but obscured. In most texts of the prose Tristan, even the traditional love-death scene is altered. This account of the legend became for five centuries the only version in which it was known. Two treatments of the legend appeared in Middle English literature. First is the northern Sir Tristrem, an anonymous poem composed about 1300 and based upon the Tristan of Thomas. Secondly, the Morte d'Arthur, composed by Sir Thomas Malory about 1469, contains an account of the Tristram legend based entirely upon the French prose Tristan. The legend did not again receive a major treatment in English literature until the mid-nineteenth century, when it became the subject of poems by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Arnold's "Tristram and Iseult" is based, except for the love-death episode, upon the version courtoise. Arnold regarded as the central problem of the narrative, not the love story itself, but Tristram's conflicting loyalties to the two Iseults, and sympathized, not with the ill-fated lovers, but with Iseult of Brittany, the innocent victim of the tragic love. She becomes in his poem symbolic of the Stoic way of life, the compromise which Arnold offered to resolve the conflict of emotion and intellect. Tennyson treated the Tristram legend in "The Last Tournament," one of the Idylls of the King based upon Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The legend is employed in the moral allegory of the Idylls as an illustration of the evil consequences of adultery. In thus regarding the love story merely as a tale of adultery, Tennyson deviated greatly from the traditionally sympathetic treatment of the narrative. Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse is, like Arnold's poem, based chiefly upon the version courtoise. In Swinburne’s treatment the love story is again central, the theme being an exaltation of the ennobling and sanctifying power of human love. Along with the explicit exaltation of passionate love is an implied criticism of the hypocritical morality and distrust of passion which Swinburne regarded as prevalent in his age. Although these three Victorian poems differ widely in plot, characterization and purpose, the Tristram legend is employed didactically in each, and the purposes governing its didactic treatment are dictated by the age in which and for which the poems were written. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

‘The poet’, Eliot wrote, ‘is occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist’. This dissertation is an investigation into the ways in which four poets – Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot – imagine what it might mean to labour in verse towards the ‘frontiers of consciousness’. This is an old question about the value of poetry, about the kinds of understanding, feeling, and participation that become uniquely available as we read (or write) verse. But it is also a question that becomes peculiarly pressing in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. In my introductory chapter, I sketch out some of the philosophical, theological, and aesthetic contexts in which this question about what poetry might do for us becomes particularly acute: each of these four poets, I suggest, invests in verse as a means of sustaining belief in those things that seem excluded, imperilled, or forfeited by what is felt to be a peculiarly modern or (to use a contested term) ‘secularized’ understanding of the world. To write poetry becomes a labour towards enabling or ratifying otherwise untenable experiences of belief. But while my broader concern is with what is at stake philosophically, theologically, and even aesthetically in this labour towards the frontiers of consciousness, my more particular concern is with the ways in which these poets think in verse about how the poetic organisation of language brings us to momentary consciousness of otherwise unavailable ‘meanings’. For each of these poets, it is as we begin to listen in to the paralinguistic sounds of verse that we become conscious of that which lies beyond the realms of the linguistic imagination. These poets develop figures within their verse in order to theorize the ways in which this peculiarly poetic ‘music’ brings us to consciousness of that which exceeds or transcends the limits of the world in which we think we live. These figures begin as images of the half-seen (glimmering, haunting, dappling, crossing) but become a way of imagining that which we might only half-hear or half-know. Chapter 2 deals with Tennyson’s figure of glimmering light that signals the presence, activity, or territory of the ‘higher poetic imagination’; In Memoriam, I argue, represents the development of this figure into a poetics of the ‘glimpse’, a poetry that repeatedly approaches the horizon of what might be seen or heard. Chapter 3 is concerned with Hardy’s figuring of the ‘hereto’ of verse as a haunted region, his ghostly figures and spectral presences becoming a way of thinking about the strange experiences of listening and encounter that verse affords. Chapter 4 attends to the dappled skins and skies of Hopkins’ verse and the ways in which ‘dapple’ becomes a theoretical framework for thinking about the nature and theological significance of prosodic experience. And Chapter 5 considers the visual and acoustic crossings of Eliot’s verse as a series of attempts to imagine and interrogate the proposition that the poetic organisation of language offers ‘hints and guesses’ of a reality that is both larger and more significant than our own.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the history in English literature of the relationship between King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, in order to show how various authors have enriched the legend by developing the psychological potential of the chief characters, and by projecting the standards of their respective ages into their versions of the story. Special emphasis has been placed on the work of Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Tennyson, E.A. Robinson, and T.H. White. The Arthurian legend is particularly appropriate for such a comparative study. It has received the attention of English writers for eight centuries, and, for the past hundred years, of writers in America as well. In the fifteenth century Malory used the legend to argue for a strong monarchy, and to remind his aristocratic countrymen of the neglected ideals of chivalry; in the nineteenth century Tennyson hoped that the re-telling of the story for its elements of moral and spiritual allegory would inspire the Victorians to rise above the materialism and sensuality which to him were signs of the times; early in the twentieth century Edwin Arlington Robinson suggested a comparison between the disintegration of Camelot and the disruption of European society after World War I, and he questioned the traditionally accepted greatness of Arthur and his kingdom; in the last decade Terence Hanbury White has seen that the problem facing King Arthur also confronts the strife-torn twentieth century how can the energies of men be harnessed for constructive rather than destructive action? The adultery between Guinevere and Lancelot has been made the focal point of this study because it involves the three best-known characters of the legend, and because it has attracted the interest of writers more than has any other element of the Arthuriad, particularly in the past one hundred years. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Translation Johannesburg, 2016 / The aim of this research report is to analyse how the Xitsonga original and the English translation of the play by CTD Marivate, Jim Xilovekelo (1965) can be translated in terms of culture-specific elements as reflected through dialogue. The research project examines the notion of the two basic translation strategies of domestication and foreignization in relation to both linguistic and culture-bound elements. A translation of the play into English forms the basis of the research, with detailed comments and annotations. The overall approach to the translation of the play was to retain the foreignness and style of the original text, taking into account the different languages and language varieties that feature in the play, such IsiZulu, Sesotho, Xitsonga, English, Fanakalo and Tsotsitaal. These all form part of South African urban heterogeneous culture in both the source and target texts. Retaining these culturallinguistic elements within the target text ensures that the style and features of the source text are reflected in the target text. / MT2017

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Philosophische Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften--München--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 278-296.

Mourning rituals and memorial aesthetics played an integral role in Victorian England. Queen Victoria's poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, confronted death on a literary level. His national elegiac poetry — addressed to Victoria — is illuminated when read as a funeral sermon. By drawing out the funeral sermon techniques Tennyson incorporates, we see that he assumes a role as religious mediator to counsel and comfort Victoria in her grief. Tennyson's funeral sermon message alters quite distinctively from Albert's death in 1861, to the death of the Duke of Clarence in 1892, where he makes a final effort to restore the Queen to an acceptance of her state and lead her to an active, healthy type of mourning. The corresponding poems, "Dedication" and "The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale: to the Mourners," highlight Tennyson's unique role as spiritual guide for Queen Victoria, and can be read as a series of funeral sermons. Indeed, Tennyson incorporates various funeral sermon elements over decades in order to encourage the Queen to heal and cope with the trauma of death in the royal family.

Although Alfred Tennyson's 1850 elegy, In Memoriam, has long been regarded for the quality of its grief and its doubt, the deepened sense of struggle and doubt produced by his allusions to Horace in both the matter and the meter of the poem have not been considered. Attending to both syntactical/tonal allusions and metrical allusions to Horace's Odes in In Memoriam, I will examine Horace's role in creating meaning in Tennyson's poem. Drawing on various critics and Tennyson's own works, I argue that Tennyson was uncommonly familiar with Horace's Odes and Horatian Alcaic (the most common meter of the Odes). I explore the similarities between the In Memoriam stanza form and the Horatian Alcaic as well as their differences to demonstrate that, while he was certainly capable of more closely replicating the Alcaic in English, Tennyson suggests but ultimately resists Horace's meter. Resistance to Horace's meter mirrors Tennyson's resistance to Horace's paganism. I conclude that Tennyson's identification with Horace, but not too close an identification, serves to enhance the themes of the poem—struggle, tension, grief, and doubt—in a way that would go unnoticed without a close examination of Horace's influence upon In Memoriam.

The 19th century's Victorian England revived interest in medieval traditions and myths, including King Arthur and the knights of the round table. British artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale painted a set of watercolor illustrations that were published in an edition of Idylls of the King, A collection of poems about the legend of King Arthur, written by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Focusing on a special edition from 1913, this essay aims to explore the intermedial relationship between word and image through a comparative study of Brickdale's illustrations and Tennyson's poem. With questions centering around the rise of book illustration, the relationship between the two mediums and how these aspects affect the viewers reception. The material for analysis includes five of Brickdale's illustrations from the "Elaine-idyll” of Tennyson's collection, as well as other artists interpretations andillustrations for comparison.