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Writing in the 1890s, in an early account of Tennyson’s poetry, the Victorian anthologist F. T. Palgrave was keen to maintain the myth of the spontaneous singer. ‘More than once’, he recorded, Tennyson’s ‘poems sprang’ from a ‘nucleus’, ‘a brief melodious phrase’ or ‘song’, which, if not transcribed immediately, ‘fled from him irrecoverably’. It has long been the case with poets of ‘lyrics’ and ‘songs’ that their skills have been depicted as improvisatory, fleeting, or inspired. Their skills have been understood, variously, as indicative either of the most dexterous of intellects, or of brilliant but uncontrolled visions, a ‘flash’ of prophetic insight or revelation – a feel of what Shelley likens to ‘the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own’. For many poets, however, the reality is one of inspiration that gives birth to intense manuscript activity and revision. It is now well known that Tennyson revised and re-revised, even after publication, until only weeks before his death; and yet no book-length study has pursued the significance of his manuscript revisions for the development of his style. This thesis traces the poet’s stylistic evolution through his notebooks, drafts, and printed volumes. Uncovering new literary manuscripts from Harvard, Lincoln, Cambridge, and New York, the study offers a more comprehensive picture of the poet’s craft: one alert to his evolving ambitions, and to the immense shifts that he effected in the landscape of English verse. The thesis begins by excavating how the notion of poetic ‘song’ fuelled a creative process at the heart of Tennyson’s revisions. In tracing the diverging fates of ‘lyric’ and ‘song’ across his notebooks, the opening chapter restores an important discourse for Tennysonian sonority that has comparatively declined in recent years. Chapter II examines Tennyson’s aesthetic control over the Victorian lyrical canon, drawing on a new manuscript of ‘The Golden Treasury’, the most significant anthology of the nineteenth century. Chapter III studies the notebook containing Tennyson’s first collection of verse, ‘Poems, by Two Brothers’. It reveals how much of the poor punctuation that sparked vehement attacks – and which is reproduced in modern editions – was not, in fact, inserted by the poet. Chapter IV explores how Tennyson’s most famous early songs and lyrics, published in ‘Poems, Chiefly Lyrical’, developed in tandem with his blank verse style. Chapters V and VI illuminate Tennyson’s ‘ten year silence’, which witnessed profound innovations in form, the revision of his 1832 Poems into his celebrated collection of 1842, and the creation of ‘In Memoriam’. Chapters VII and VIII piece together the notebooks, proofs, drafts, and revision copies of ‘The Princess’, Tennyson’s medley of songs and voices, lyrics and blank verse. By its end, the study reveals how the ringing qualities of his works emerged through manuscript revision: in the interplay between sonorous forms and narratives that came, over decades of change, to shape the distinctive drama of Tennyson’s style.

This thesis explores representations of wild nature in two Arthurian texts – one British and one American – produced in an age characterised by rapid social transformation: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859-1885) and Howard Pyle’s Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903). By investigation of the textual descriptions of wilderness and the portrayals of characters living there, the study aims to investigate what attitudes towards unkempt nature are displayed in the two texts. While both narratives give evidence of a powerful nostalgia for a vanishing paradise, the yearning for Eden is expressed quite differently. Pyle’s text fuses the concepts of wilderness and paradise together by depicting the unkempt landscape as a place of splendour and spiritual enjoyment. Such a celebration of nature might well be seen a reaction against the rapid loss of wild spaces across America (and Britain) during the life-time of the author. In the Idylls, paradise is represented in the domesticated yet green landscape of the faraway fairy island of Avilion. Wilderness, on the other hand, is depicted as a harmful disease progressively spreading across the realm, arguably bringing about a moral degeneration among the human characters. In the end, however, it is not wilderness, but the corruption of the supposedly civilised characters that causes the collapse of Arthur’s empire. On closer inspection, the real danger thus seems to come from culture and material conditions rather than from nature.

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Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)