Riassunto per l'esame di Letteratura inglese 3, prof Saglia, libro consigliato The gardener's daughter, Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson: The poet of Englishness and Britishness in the Victorian Age

He wrote about the past, the Middle Ages, the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, and the tradition of chivalry (as a set of values such as generosity, self-abnegation, and courage that can also be improved in the present). He also wrote about the present: the principles of contemporary England and Britain. So he was not only nostalgic, but he also celebrated the institutions of England and their missions (defending Christianity, expanding the Empire, and bringing civilization to primitive people).

To the Queen

The poem “To the Queen” is dedicated to Queen Victoria, published in 1851 to celebrate the Queen, who is glorified. The Queen is the kingdom, the nation, the mother of the English. He also uses the figure of the Queen as a symbol of condensation of the values of Britain. He speaks about the concept of loyalty: the Queen is loyal to her own royalty but also to the land: crown + nation. Also, the nation is loyal to the Queen. Then this concept is projected outside on an imperial scale. He’s presenting imperialism as a possible development for the nation and the rest of the world. NB: “our” vast Orient – idea of possession. By this time, Tennyson was the poet laureate in succession to W. Wordsworth. He was the official poet in the British Empire.

Very often in his poetry, he acted like a sage = wise interpreter of the meaning of life. This is visible in “In Memoriam” (1850): it’s a long elegy in rhymes. It was dedicated to his friend Hallam, who died young. Tennyson was devastated and began to write poems mourning this death and celebrating his life. This book became a kind of vademecum (how to live life and how to face death). This was true for Queen Victoria too because her husband died young and she found consolation in Tennyson’s book. “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Life of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 In his own lifetime, Tennyson was the most popular of poets. Such popularity inevitably provoked a reaction in the decades following his death. The Edwardians and Georgians established the fashion of making fun of Tennyson's achievements.

 Tennyson's stature as one of the major poets of the English language seems uncontroversial today. Like his poetry, Tennyson's life and character have been reassessed in recent times. To many of his contemporaries, he seemed a man whose life had been sheltered, marred only by the loss of his best friend in youth. During much of his career, Tennyson may have been isolated, but his was not a sheltered life in the real sense of the word.

 Tennyson was the fourth son in a family of 12 children. One of his brothers had to be confined to an insane asylum for life; another was long addicted to opium; another had violent quarrels with his father, the Reverend Dr. George Tennyson.

 This father, a man of considerable learning, had been born the eldest son of a wealthy landowner and had, therefore, expected to be heir to his family's estates. Instead, he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother and had to make his own livelihood by joining the clergy, a profession that he disliked. After George Tennyson had settled in a small rectory in Somersby, he was often drunk and violent; he was nevertheless able to act as his sons' tutor in classical and modern languages to prepare them for entering the university.

 Before leaving this strange household for Cambridge, Tennyson had already demonstrated a flair for writing verse—precocious exercises in the manner of John Milton or Byron or the Elizabethan dramatists. He had even published a volume in 1827, in collaboration with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers. This feat drew him to the attention of a group of gifted undergraduates at Cambridge, "the Apostles," who encouraged him to devote his life to poetry.

 He was painfully shy, and the friendships he found at Cambridge as well as the intellectual and political discussions in which he participated gave him confidence and widened his horizons as a poet. The most important of these friendships was with Arthur Hallam, a leader of the Apostles, who later became engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. Hallam's sudden death, in 1833, seemed an overwhelming calamity to his friend.

 Not only the long elegy In Memoriam (1850) but many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to this early friendship. Tennyson's career at Cambridge was interrupted and finally broken off in 1831 by family dissensions and financial need, and he returned home to study and practice the craft of poetry.

 His early volumes (1830 and 1832) were attacked as "obscure" or "affected" by some of the reviewers. Tennyson suffered acutely under hostile criticism, but he also profited from it. His 1842 volume demonstrated a remarkable leap forward, and in 1850 he at last attained fame and full critical recognition with In Memoriam. In the same year, he became poet laureate in succession to William Wordsworth.

 His life thereafter was a comfortable one, and he managed to marry Emily Sellwood, whom he had loved for a long time but could not marry because of poverty. He was as popular as Byron had been, and the earnings from his poetry enabled him to purchase a house in the country.

 His notoriety was enhanced by his colorful appearance. Huge and shaggy in cloak and broad-brimmed hat, gruff in manner, he impressed everyone as what is called a "character". Tennyson had a booming voice that electrified listeners when he read his poetry. Moreover,