Roll no: 11
Topic: Tennyson and Browning a study of
poet’s
Paper: (6) The Victorian Literature
Submitted to: department of English
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Introduction:
v 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 forever 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.
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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.
·
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.
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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. Hewrite;
“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.
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Conclusion:
Tennyson and Browning both
are Victorian Age poet. Robert Browning Was in almost every Respect Tennyson’s
opposite. What chiefly interested him was the study of human soul.Both are
dominated it in the middle of century.
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