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. "

Following a general historical discussion of the idea of nature, the study continues with an analysis of the main sources for Tennyson's nature, concept. Here some stress is put upon the temperament of the poet as well as upon his scientific, philosophical and religious affinities with the doctrines of progress and evolution. Chapter three deals with the view of nature in Tennyson's poetry. That Tennyson regarded nature merely as the physical world interpreted by science is demonstrated by a treatment of his poetry that recognizes the different moods of the poet. The conclusion arrived at is that, no matter what mood he was in, Tennyson viewed nature with suspicion. His attempts to embrace pantheism or to escape actuality through mysticism, transcendentalism, or romantic primitivism indicated his failure to reconcile his idea of nature with religious beliefs that demanded personal immortality and absolute morality for man. Because of these emotional needs, Tennyson, especially after the publication of Darwin's scientific treatises on evolution, was forced into a dualism that separated moral (or spiritual) man from a vast, cruel, immoral (or amoral) nature that Tennyson saw as antagonistic to both man and God. For Tennyson man's progress had nothing to do with nature. Chapter four argues that Meredith adopted Goethe's idea that nature is a vital, benevolent being that includes man and God in a unity of the real and ideal worlds. Because Meredith avoided the contradictions that science and Kantian transcendentalism introduced into Tennyson's philosophy, he was able to attain to a conception of the creative and ethical oneness of Earth. Hence he could use Darwinism to clarify his basically Goethian concept of nature, for he abjured the ideas of personal immortality and absolute morality and saw man as a creature of Earth who was progressing toward the harmonious altruistic balance of blood, brain, and spirit that existed in essential humanity. Meredith could rejoice in the struggle of life, which he saw as a struggle for balance and not for existence, because he had from the beginning accepted nature as a beneficent Earth to whose operations man must adjust himself. The last chapter discusses the different approaches of Tennyson and Meredith to nature, their attitudes to nature's law, and their ideas concerning man's place in nature. One argument resulting from this comparison is that Tennyson, applying Kant's transcendental theories and his own emotional reactions to his scientific interpretation of nature, was pessimistic about nature, whereas Meredith, approaching nature by way of the Goethian synthesis and a happy outlook that discerned a desirable mean in all nature's operations, was optimistic about her. Moreover, Meredith's idea of nature was more modern than Tennyson's, for Meredith's belief in altruism and co-operation being the primary law of nature is supported by certain present-day biological and sociological theories. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

At the height of their popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, a vast transatlantic readership conferred on Longfellow and Tennyson the title "The People's Poet." This examination of Anglo-American Victorian poetry attempts to account for that phenomenon. A poetic work is first defined as an aesthetic experience that occurs within a triangular matrix of text, author, and reader. As reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss contends, both the creator's and the receptor's aesthetic experiences are filtered through a historically determined "horizon of expectations" that governs popular appeal. A historical account of the publication and promotion of Longfellow's and Tennyson's poetry provides empirical evidence for how and why their poetic texts appealed to a widespread readership. This account is followed by an analysis of the class and gender of Victorian readers of poetry that considers the role of "consumers" in the production of both poetry and poetic personae as commodities for public consumption. The development of each poet's voice is then examined in a context of a gendered "separate-sphere" ideology to explain how both Longfellow's and Tennyson's adoption of "feminine" cadences in their respective voices influenced the nineteenth-century reception of their work. The final two chapters analyze select texts—lyric and narrative—to determine reasons for their popular appeal in relation to the level of active reader engagement in the poetic experience. Through affective lyricism, as in Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" and Tennyson's "Break, break, break," these poets demanded that their readers listen; through sentiment transformed into domestic allegory, as in Miles Standish and Enoch Arden, these poets demanded further that they feel. While both Victorian poets were later decanonized by their modern successors, contemporary critics, mainly academic, have restored Tennyson to the literary canon while relegating Longfellow to a second-rate schoolroom status. The conclusion speculates on the possible reasons underlying the disparate reputations assigned to the two poets, both of whom, during their lifetimes, shared equally the fame and fortune that attended their role as "The People's Voice." / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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.

Orientador: Yara Frateschi Vieira / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-18T07:12:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Abaurre_MariaLuizaMarques_M.pdf: 5360910 bytes, checksum: f9c3d6cf3762f54e4da6e93c50a0c136 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1993 / Resumo: Não tem resumo na obra impressa. Base IEL resumo: Leitura comparativa de duas refacções da matéria de Bretanha produzidas no século XIX: Idylls of the King, de Alfred Tennyson, e A Connecticut Yankec in King Arthur's Court, de Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain). O interesse em um estudo comparativo das duas obras é grande, uma vez que, tendo utilizado o mesmo texto como fonte básica para suas refacções - Le Morte D'Arthur (Thomas Malory) -, Tennyson e Clemens produziram obras profundamente diferentes, tanto na abordagem quanto no tratamento da matéria de Bretanha. Da comparação feita entre as alterações promovidas por um e outro autor, ao trabalharem com o texto de Malory, é delineado um interessante quadro histórico-social, bem como são levantadas algumas hipóteses relativas à manutenção do interesse literário por histórias de natureza arturiana / Abstract: Not informed. / Mestrado / Teoria Literaria / Mestre em Letras

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Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Tennyson, and Virginia Woolf: three major figures of British art and letters who have received much critical attention individually, but have not yet been studied together. In this project I consider the valedictory works of these artists at their convergence, first through their obvious geographic, familial, and aesthetic relationships, then in more subtle, deeper, and overarching dimensions. The chief texts that are the focus of this dissertation are Tennyson's Idylls of the King, plus five of the Laureate's most popular poems; Cameron's photographic illustrations of these poems; and a selection of Virginia Woolf's late work, with a focus on "The Searchlight," Three Guineas, Between the Acts, and Anon. The dissertation also makes use of apposite poems, essays, life writing, and fiction created by these artists. Since "The Theatre of Anon" focuses primarily on Cameron's Illustrations, a chapter containing photographs of all the books' pages concludes the dissertation text. An additional selection of images is included as an appendix, in support of the central thesis of this project. The complex friendship between Tennyson and Cameron inspired the latter's only published book, a collection of poetic excerpts accompanied by images of his poems staged as scenes from amateur theatricals. The photos, with the photographer acting as their playwright-director, evoke the literary pageant in Woolf's last novel. In photographing the Illustrations, Cameron took control of the Laureate's poetry, metaphorically assuming the role of Vivien stealing Merlin's poetic spells. This dissertation traces Woolf's perception of her great aunt as it evolved over the decades, beginning with the eccentric, affected, and comical Cameron of Freshwater (1926) and ultimately portraying her as a dynamic, determined, and creative artist who helped provide inspiration for the character of the playwright-director Miss La Trobe of Between the Acts (1940). I argue that her great aunt's work influenced Woolf to create the figure she called Anon as a counterpart to Tennyson's King Arthur, and to place La Trobe's pageant-play at the center of her last novel, Between the Acts, as a final act of homage to Cameron. An aggregate of all anonymous minstrels, artists, and authors who ever lived, Anon appears in the guise of Miss La Trobe, whose communal, participatory art demonstrates how the traditionally monocular "eye" of history can be enlarged in community theatre from a single "I" to a collaborative project accommodating multiple perspectives. The Arthurian chivalry to which the ideology of Anon is set in counterpoint represents a conservative point of view based on the belief in a divinely-ordained social order headed by a monarch, with prescribed roles for each of its members. Valor in combat and devotion in courtly love, chivalry's two chief expressions, are the basis of Arthur's knightly code, which has influenced British national character and identity from the country's founding. Arthur reached his Anglophone apotheosis in the nineteenth-century's Gothic revival, epitomized in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. At the end of her career, at the start of the Second World War, Woolf came to believe that theatrical performance offered a better paradigm for social organization than the chivalric hierarchy at the root of the patriarchal British Victorian culture in which she had grown up. She saw in the community theatre a gathering place that could foster moments of transcendent unity, intellectual freedom, and imaginative inspiration, and in drama an art form resilient enough to withstand an audience's interruption and disillusionment. Performance provided a collaborative alternative to the conservative constraints that were her Victorian legacy; history, she felt, could be more accurately portrayed through the accretion of expressive theatrical performances than by the monolithic, linear narrative it had become as the official transcript of the nation's past. The theatricals scenes of La Trobe's pageant and Cameron's Illustrations - both composed of scraps and fragments of quotidian life rearranged and recombined - offer a new visual conception of the past. Working at the level of what Walter Benjamin has called photography's optical unconscious the dissertation demonstrates how Cameron's photographs reveal a reconstellation or reconfiguration, of the dominant British narrative from defamiliarized versions of the past that resonate with La Trobe's pageant. I propose that Cameron's photos re-envision canonical texts, inspiring a new mythology for Woolf, one that reflects a fluid and elastic version of the British national story. Challenging the received Carlylean conception of history as the biographies of great men, Woolf's counter-history, like Cameron's book of illustrations, features ordinary men and women playing extraordinary roles. The legendary Arthur, traditionally credited with uniting the country's thirteen tribes, founding Britain, and shaping the nation's identity, is but one actor among many in Woolf's pageant of history; his starring role in Tennyson's Idylls of the King is reduced to a few key scenes in the Illustrations and a cameo appearance in Between the Acts. Woolf implies that though there may still be room in history's narrative for heroic men, they will no longer dominate it. With its evolving, democratic nature, the community theatre created by Anon offers a paradigm of citizenship and social organization that Woolf believed could encompass British history, re-envision it, and offer the world's citizens hope for the future.

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