1. The Victorian Age/ Tennyson http://www.wwnorton. com/college/english/n ael/victorian/topic_3/il lustrations/imtennyso n.htm

2. The Victorian Age  Queen Victoria (1837-1901): progress, science, liberal and laissez- faire attitudes  England ’ s foreign trade > France + Germany + Italy’s  Prudery, priggishness, hypocrisy?

3. Age of Science (Huxley)  Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82)  Sir Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology  Genesis/separate creation/human soul/the Creator

4. Novel  Confidence in the early period: omniscient narrator + social challenges  Uncertainties near the end  Realism: the concern with representing life as it might actually be lived  Example: from Dickens (Bildungsroman) to Conrad

5. Victorian Poetry  Exploration of the limits of perspectives: dramatic monologue (unreliable narrator)  Robert Browning

6. Reactions during the final decades of the 19th century  The “ art for art ’ s sake ” movement and Oscar Wilde

7. Alfred, Lord Tennyson  Poet Laureate of England (1850)

8. “ Ulysses ” (1842)  Dramatic monologue  Blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)  Enjambment (the prose effect)  The turning point in Ulysses ’ s life  Prompted by Hallam ’ s death.

9. Question  What techniques does Tennyson in “ Ulysses ” employ to characterize the speaker?  1. How does he identify himself?  2. How does he analyze his character?  3. The speaker ’ s comparison of himself with his son

10. “ The Lotos-Eaters ”  A contrast to “ Ulysses ”

11. Question  In what way do "Ulysses" and "The Lotos- Eaters" present conclusions thematically antithetical to one another? Do these poems speak to one another? What conclusions might both support?

12. “ The Charge of the Light Brigade ” (1854)  Glorifies war and courage  Due to a preposterous order, the reconnaissance cavalry started a gallant but ridiculous assault upon fixed Russian guns.

13. Question  How does Tennyson use repetition to achieve poetic rhythms in “ The Charge of the Light Brigade ” ?

14. “ In Memoriam A. H. H. ”  Queen Victoria: Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort.  For many humanists, answer to the quarrel of science versus faith.  Tennyson: termed this work “ The way of the soul ”  Tennyson surmounts his problem by intuition belief in benevolence and acceptance of evolution of man into the higher man

15. Pastoral Elegy (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegy )  elegy, an elaborately formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or reflecting seriously on a solemn subject. The tradition of the pastoral elegy, derived from Greek poems by Theocritus and other Sicilian poets in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, evolved a very elaborate series of conventions by which the dead friend is represented as a shepherd mourned by the natural world; pastoral elegies usually include many mythological figures such as the nymphs who are supposed to have guarded the dead shepherd, and the muses invoked by the elegist.

16. Question  What is the “ In Memoriam Stanza ” ?

17. Question  How does Tennyson deal with the dilemma of his wavering faith and mounting skepticism in “ In Memoriam ” ? Does the poem resolve his quandary?