The poem In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson comprises sections that differ in emotion, tone and appearance but are all unified by the speakers confusion about religion and new discoveries in science. Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, which had many theories of evolution which include, the survival of the fittest and natural selection. These scientific developments characterized the Victorian age and confused the foundation of the Christian faith among people. The stories of the bible conflicted with the scientific facts and the people could no longer accept many of the things that the bible once said. There are many sections of the poem where the confusion is present such as in 54, 55, and 56. In the prologue the speaker confesses …show more content…
His trust in God has completely weakened. He now must "wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave" (Rundle). The speaker is making a wish, not a statement or a question of belief. He is faced with facts after facts telling him his faith is useless, which makes the speaker now hope that there is life beyond death and that there really is a heaven. The path to God has become dark and the speaker cannot see god or the way to get to him. God, who is represented through light, has become engulfed in darkness. God is no longer a ray of hope to the speaker, but an unknowable hollowness. The speaker says, "call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope" (Rundle). In the darkness, the speaker cries out to God, not because he knows he exists, but because he hopes and feels that he exists. The speakers belief, is not based on fact or even faith but only a feeling. The feeling and the trust he has in heaven is a reward for earthly suffering and has become faint. His faith has no strength and it is not growing. The speaker questions “Are god and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams?” (Rundle). The speaker is questioning god about people’s purpose on earth according to how people are described by Nature and if Darwin’s theory of natural selection can ever be one with the bible and god. Nature seems no longer god’s creation …show more content…
The words of the poem equal hopelessness and bleak imagery, imagery of anything but enlightenment. There is no light just darkness. When he cries. "O life as futile, then, as frail!" (Rundle), it has become apparent to him that life on earth is useless and there is nothing to hope for after death. The only point to living is eat or be eaten. For Nature the idea of the spirit or the soul does not refer to any divine unearthly element but to the simple act of breathing. The speaker writes that Nature is, “‘So careful of the type?’ but no she cries a thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go” (Rundle). He has just mentioned the existence of dinosaurs that have existed for millions of years. They were nature’s most extreme creations but ended up extinct and fossilized. The speaker comes to a new realization that Nature works to improve the species and its creations but eventually all species will be brought to the same end. The speaker is in great despair that Nature is so careless of all life, which reflects how most of the Victorian people felt. He believes that it is more horrible to be a human than a creature and struggles with the uncertainty. Nature will not only allow this extinction, but will actually cause it, no matter what the species is, its end will be the same as every other species. The speaker understands that Nature's
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
When I first got this assignment I racked my brain for a topic that would interest me as well as something I could learn from. When I came across Alfred Lord Tennyson it sparked my interest and as I read on I decided that I would write about him. My next decision was to pick one of his poems to research. I finally chose In Memoriam I read the background on it and it interested me. In Memoriam is very long so I'm only going to discuss some it. But I want to begin by discussing the Victorian Doubt in God.
You must analyse at least six poems, ensuring you include at least one pre-1914 poem.
Many people across the world are affected every day by the gift of music. To those of us who let it into our lives, we truly view it for what it is. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes how powerful it can be. For me singing was something that I was always good at; I never really took it to heart. I never understood when people would talk about how music had changed there lives; I just didn't see how a few notes put together could affect anyone so deeply. It wasn't until last April when our choir was chosen among a select few to perform at Carnegie Hall that I would understand the indubitable impact of music.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. San Diego: U. of California P, 1979. 168-200, 249-53.
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Tennyson’s poetry is renowned for reflecting a penetrating introspection and meditative expressiveness unsurpassed by other poets of his time. His explorations into a vast breadth of topics ranging from the political to the deeply personal reflect his multifarious enthusiasms, and his ability to reach out to his readers as well as probe the depths of psychological expression. ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and ‘Mariana’, two of his earliest poems, exemplify this ability to communicate internal states of mind through his use of scenery.
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
These sentiments are not immediately salient in the poem(with the exception of a rare explicit reference to anger in the final stanza of canto 82: "For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart"), but the question, of course,certainly is, most notably in l. 10-12 of the Preface: "Thou madest man, he knows not why, /He thinks he was not made to die; / And thou hast made him: thou art just." Faith, of course,deeply informs Tennyson's verse, but if we have a mind to it, we may certainly also discover anote of bitter sarcasm in these few lines: turning a rational creature such as man loose, in anear-infinitely complex and dangerous world (as Tennyson was, by degrees, discovering oursto be), without so much as a hint of purpose or direction, can hardly be called a just act. Canto21, additionally, reinforces this reading of an undercurrent of anger if we come to it with thesame perspective with which we approached canto 6: in penning imagined reactions to hislamenting Hallam's death (the acknowledgement of which, in l. 1's "rest" and l. 3's "grave",can be read as confirming that denial is no longer sustainable, as per Kübler-Ross'formulation), Tennyson might be said to be giving voices to parts of his own mind whichoppose, in whatever form, the expression of grief- note that the voices given the mostattention are those which speak "harshly" (l. 6-8) and are "wroth" (l. 13-20). Finally, variousreferences to suddenly-disturbed patterns (such as, among others, the first stanzas of cantos 7,8, and 13) and Tennyson's references, too frequent to enumerate, to Hallam's greatness, seemto echo Kübler-Ross and Kessler when they note that in the anger stage "assumptions comecrashing down around us when the good, the just, the loving, the healthy, the young, and eventhe needed and most wanted die on us" (14).The bargaining stage follows anger in the Kübler-Ross model; this stage ischaracterized by a general acknowledgement of
Southam, B.C. “Tennyson.” Writers and Their Works : NO 218. London: Longman Group, 1971. p.6. print.
330-337. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord of the Lord. The Lady of Shalott. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed.
Barbour, Ian G. Religion in an Age of Science. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. Print. (BL 240.2 .B368 1990)
The Victorian Age, named for the queen who reigned nearly the entire century, was characterized by incredible scientific progress. Charles Darwin, for example, came forth with his treatise The Origin of Species, which advanced his radical theories of evolution and survival and rocked the pillars of traditional Christian faith in humankind's superiority to the beasts of the earth. Darwin's theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest conflicted with the story of the Creation related in the Bible. Moreover, scientists now had proof that the Earth was much older than had ever been imagined before, making the history of humanity seem like a blink of the universe's eye. The Victorian population could no longer blindly accept that the world had been created in six days after geologists had proven that the world evolved into its current form over millions of years. In addition, a theory called "Higher Criticism" developed which read the Bible not as the infallible word of God, but as a historical text. In the face of these incredible and disturbing discoveries and theories, the faith of many Victorian Christians was profoundly shaken. The Victorian masses no longer had a bedrock of tradition and Biblical scripture to stand upon; it had been dashed to pieces by fossilized rocks and the skulls of apelike men. The poet laureate of the age, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the voice of the Victorian people, expresses his horror and bewilderment at the implications of these scientific discoveries in "In Memoriam A. H. H." In sections 54, 55, and 56 of this lengthy poem, Tennyson finds his belief in God weakened and his faith foundering in the face of scientific fact.