Alfred Lord Tennyson: la vita e il pensiero

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892)

LIFE - He was the 4th son in a family of 12 children. His father was a man of considerable learing,

who joint the clergy even if he disliked this profession. His sense of dissatisfaction led him to

drunkenness. He was nevertheless able to act as his sons’ tutor in classical and modern

languages, to prepare them for entering the university

- The most important friendship wax with Arthur Hallam. His sudden death was a tragedy to

Tennyson. He wrote a long elegy, “In Memoriam” for him and in a lot of his poems emerges

the tribute of this friendship.

- With “In Memoriam” he became the favourite poet of the queen. She said “Next to the

bible, “In Memoriam” is my confort”.

- 1850: he became poet laureate in succession to Wordsworth.

- Troubles with Emily Sellwood, the woman he loved but cannot marry until 1850 because of

poverty.

- After he started to gain from his poetry, he bought a house in the country, which he enjoyed

a lot. He became also a “character” for the way he acted and dressed. A photographer, Julia

Cameron, who took portrits of him, called him “the most beautiful old man on earth”.

THOUGHT

• The technological changes made by Victorian inventors fascinated him, sometimes giving

him an exultant assurance of human progress. At other times the horror of industrialism, the

persistence of barbarity and bloodshed (=spargimenti di sangue), and the greed (=avidità) of

the newly rich destroyed his hopes that humanity was evolving upwards.

• He was essentially a poet of the country side, a man whose being was conditioned by the

recurring rhythms of rural rather than urban life. So many of his poems are about the PAST,

not about the present or the future. Tennyson said that “the words far far away had always

a strange charm” for him, even in his childhood. He was haunted by what he called “the

passion of the past”. The past became is great time, whether it be his own past, his country

past or the past of the world itself.

 →

Past= la morte nella vita nostaligia + dolcezza (come baci che sono ancora vivi nei nostril

ricordi)

 “Locksley Hall”: He refers to contemporary society. He expresses the division between

accepting this process and the sense of nostalgia for what is past. At the end he seems to

accept the world has changed.

 Ulysses represent the effort to go on despite the nostalgia!

• →

FLACTUATION OF MOODS we can see it especially in “In Memoriam”. From despair (for

→ →

the death of his friend) we pass to doubt finally: hope (renewed faith)

• In the poem “The two voices” we see: 1) the poetical voice lives a struggle between the

voice of joy and that of despair; 2) shifting moods

• Two coexisting tempers: Romantic sensibility + Summons of reality (evocazione realtà)

• →

The private Tennyson he’s very sensitive, he appeals to heart, inwardness.

• →

Theme of melancholy desire to escape from his world.