Paper- EC-204 A critique of Tennyson and Robert Browning as the poets of Victorian Landscape

Assignment Paper: - 9

Topic                     : - A critique of Tennyson and Robert Browning  
                                              as   the poetsof Victorian
                                              Landscape.                                                                    

Student’s name     : - Makwana Jayshri D.

Roll no                    :- 16

URL                       :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 2

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                   
        Submitted to,

     Miss.Ruchira Dudhrejiya                                                                   

     Department of  English

     Bhavnagar University

                                           

  

A critique of Tennyson and Robert Browning as the poets of Victorian Landscape.

                                                                                                                                                         Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

                    Alfred Tennyson is a man, who reads this haunting poem of “Merlin and The Gleam” finds in it a suggestion of the spirit of the poet’s whole life, - his devotion to the ideal as expressed in poetry, his early romantic impressions, his struggles, doubts, triumph, and his thrilling message to his race. Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in England.

              Tennyson was not only a man and a poet; he was a voice of a whole people, expressing in exquisite melody their doubts and their faith, their grief and their triumphs. In the wonderful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England’s greatest poets. The dreaminess of Spencer, the majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake and Shelly, the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron- all these striking qualities are evident on  successive pages of Tennyson’s poetry.

    Characteristics of Tennyson’s poetry:-

                 If we attempt to sum up quality of Tennyson, as shown in these works, the task is difficult one; but three things stands out more or less plainly.

    First, Tennyson is essentially the artist. No other in his age studied the art of poetry so contently or with such singleness of purpose; and Swinburne rivals him in melody and the perfect finish of his verse.

    Second, like all the great writers of age, he is empathetically a teacher, often a Leader. In the preceding age as the French Revolution, law lessens was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in literature.

    Third, Tennyson’s theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of order – of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect man. ‘In Memoriam’, ‘Idylls of the King’, ‘The Princess’,- here are three widely different poems; yet the theme of each, so far as poetry is kind of spiritual philosophy and weighs its words before it utters them, is the orderly development of law in the natural and in the spiritual world. 

    Tennyson’s Works:-

                  Tennyson is the central poet of the nineteenth century. Tennyson’s works it may be well to record two things, by way of suggestions first, Tennyson’s poetry is not so much to be studies as to be read and appreciated and second, we should by all means begin to get acquainted with Tennyson in the days of poetry, is to be eternally young, and like Adam in Paradise, to find every morning a new world, fresh, wonder, inspiring, as if just from the hands of God.

    “In Memoriam (1850)”

    “The princess – a serio-comic blank verse (1847)”

    “Ulysses (1842)”

    “Tears, idle tears (1847)”

    “Chiefly Lyrical (1864)”

    “Maud (1864)”

    “Arthurian Idylls of the king (1859)”

                                               Robert Browning his fellow worker. The differences in the two men are world-wide. Tennyson was man, hating noise and publicity, loving to be alone with nature like Wordsworth. Browning was sociable, delighting in applause, in bustle of big world. At his death in 1892, was mourned as “the voice of England.” Of the poems of 1842, we have already mentioned those best worth reading. The Princess, A Medley (1847), a long poem of over three thousand lines of blank verse, is Tennyson’s answer to the question of woman’s rights and woman’s sphere, which was then, as in our own day, strongly agitating the public mind.

                                In this poem a baby finally solves the problem which philosophers have pondered ever since men began to think connectedly about human society. A few exquisite songs, like  “Tears, Idles, Tears”, “”Bugle song”, and “Sweet and Low” from the most delightful part of this poem, which in general is hardly up to the standard of the poet’s later work. The poem “The Princess” tells the story of a heroic princess who forswears the world of men and founds a women’s university where men are forbidden to enter. The Prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess’s hand. They lose and are wounded, but the women nurse, the man back to health. Eventually the princess returns the prince’s love. Several later including Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera princess Ida.

                                           Perhaps the most loved of all Tennyson’s works is “In Memoriam”, which on account of both its theme and its exquisite worship, is “One of the few immortal names that were not born to die.” The immediate occasion of this remarkable poem was Tennyson’s profound personal grief at the death of his friend Hallam. As he wrote lyric after, inspired by this sad subject, the poet’s grief became less personal and the greater grief of humanity mourning for its dead and questioning its immortality took possession of him. Gradually the poem became an expression, first of universal doubt, and then of universal faith- a faith which rests ultimately not an reason or human love is the theme of the poem, which is made up of over on hundred different lyrics.

                                        “In Memoriam”, he insists that we must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science. He   write; “strong, son of God, immortal love,

            Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

            By faith, and alone, embrace,

            Believing where we can not prove,”

                       The poem begins as a tribute to and invocation of the strong son of God; since man, never having seen God’s face, has no proof of his existence, he can only reach god through faith.

                       At the end of the poem, he concludes that God’s eternal plan include purposive biological development. Thus, he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does not mean the end of the old faith and the poem also reflects Tennyson’s straddle with the Victorian growing awareness of another sort of past; the vast expanse of geological time and evolutionary history.

    “Crossing the Bar”

                        In ‘Crossing the Bar’, Tennyson is speaking about his own impending death. Within the poem. The image of the see is used to represent the “barrier” between life and death. The construction of this metaphor centers on the image of ‘Crossing the bars; a “bar” is physically a bar of sand in shallow water. The “bar” which Tennyson must cross, however, can only be crossed in one direction. This is made explicit in a couple of ways by the poet.

    “Ulysses”

                  ‘Ulysses’ is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet, Tennyson. The character of Ulysses in Greek Odysseus has been explored widely in literature. The adventures of Odysseus were first recorded in Homer’s Iliad and, Odyssey. His Ulysses and the Lotus-Eater’s draw upon actual incidents in Homer’s Odyssey.

    “Tears, Idle Tears (1849)”

                        This poem was about the passion of the past, the abiding in the transient. “Tears, Idle Tears”, to analyze, his experience, and in the full light of the disparity and even apparent contradiction of the various elements, bring them into a new unity, he secures not only richness and depth but dramatic power as well.

                      Tennyson’s various work treat issues of political and historical concern, as well as scientific matters classical mythology and deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Tennyson is both of a poet of penetrating introspection and a poet of the people; he plums the depth of his own consciousness while also giving voice to the national consciousness of Victorian society.

    Robert Browning (1812-1889)

             “How good is man’s life, the mere living? How fit employ

             All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy” 

                                            In this new song of David from Browning from Borrowing’s soul, we have a suggestion of the astonishing vigor and hope that characterize all the works of Browning, the one poet of the age who, after thirty years of continues work, was finally recognized and placed beside Tennyson, and whom future ages may judges to be a greater poet perhaps, even, the greatest in our literature since Shakespeare.

    Robert Browning place and massage:-

                                Browning’s place in our literature will be better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson whom we have just studied. Tennyson is first the artist and then the message is always the important thing, and he is careless, too careless, of the form in which it is expressed. Tennyson, whose work is always artistic, never studied art, but was devoted to the science; while Browning whose , work is seldom artistic in form, thought that art was the most suitable subject for man’s story.

     Robert Borrowing’s Works:-

                         A glance at even the titles which Browning gave to his best known volumes-

    Dramatic Lyrics (1842)

    Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

    Men and Women (1864)

    Dramatic Persona (1864)

                                                   Will suggest hoe strong the dramatic element is in all his works. Indeed, all his poems may be divided into three classes,- Pure Dramas like ‘Strafford and A Blot in the sculcheon’; Dramatic narrative like ‘Pippa Passes’, and Dramatic lyrics like ‘The last Ride Together’, which are short poems expressing some strong personal emotion, or describing some dramatic episode in human life, and in which the hero himself generally tells the story and other poems like:-

    “My last Duchess”

    “Men and Women (1855)”

    “Dramatic Persona (1864)”

                                                 Short poems like:-

    “Meeting at Night”

    “Parting at Morning”

    “Home Thought from Abroad”

    “Two in the Campagna”

                            Among Browning’s longer poems there are two, at least, that well deserve our study. ‘Pippa passes’ aside from its rare poetical qualities is a study of unconscious influence. The idea of the poem was suggested to Browning while listening to a gypsy girl singing in the woods near his home, but transfers the scene of the action to the little mountain town of Asolo, in Italy. Pippa is a little silk weaver, who goes out in the morning to enjoy her one holiday of the whole year. As she thinks of her own happiness. She is vaguely wishing that she might share it, and do some good. Then, with her childish imagination, she begins to weave a little romance in which she shares in the happiness of the four greatest and happiest people in Asolo.

    “ My last Duchess”

                      ‘My last Duchess’ first published in the collection ‘Dramatic Lyrics’ in 1842, ‘My last Duchess’ is an excellent example of Browning’s use of dramatic monologue.

                    As the poem unfolds, the reader learns the speaker of the poem, Duke Ferrara, is talking to a representative of his fiancee’s family. Standing in front of a portrait of the Duke’s last wife, now dead, the Duke talks about the woman’s failing and imperfection. The irony of the poem surfaces as the reader discovers that the young woman’s faults were qualities like compassion, modesty, delight in simple pleasures and courtesy to those who served her. In this dramatic monologue, Browning has not only depicted the inner workings of his speaker to reveal his own failings and imperfections to the reader.

    Conclusion:-

                      The two poets, Tennyson and Browning, differ even more widely in their respective messages.

                             Tennyson’s message reflects the growing order of the age, and is summed up in the word ‘law’. In his views, the individual will must be suppressed; the self must always be subordinate. His resignation is at times almost oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it suggests Schopenhauer in its mixture of fate and pessimism.

                            Robert Browning’s message on the other hand, is the triumph of the individual wills over all obstacles the self is not subordinate but supreme. There is nothing pessimistic in the whole range of poetry. He is the voice of the Anglo-Saxon, standing up in the face of all obstacles and saying “I can I will.”