Lord Tennyson and W.B Yeats: A Comparison Of Women Poetry, like other forms of written expression, is subject to change with the progression of time and expansion of thought. Victorian poetry and Modern poetry are two genres separated by time, but connected by subject matter. Lord Tennyson, a well-known Victorian poet and W.B Yeats, a respected Modern poet, are both men who found inspiration in the female form. How these two men interpreted that inspiration and expressed it in their poetry differ. By better understanding these men’s personal histories with women, in unison with the different elements of their poetic genres, the different approaches to their image of women can be seen. The accumulation of various influences, experiences and inspirations result in the works like, “Mariana” by Lord Tennyson and “No Second Troy” by W.B Yeats. To begin, Alfred Tennyson was the fourth son in a large family with twelve children. Alfred’s brothers each had particular struggles they had to overcome, one had an opium addiction while another regularly fought with their father, the Reverend Dr. George Tennyson. Alfred Tennyson’s father was the son of a wealthy landowner, but was disinherited when he instead wished to join the clergy. Alfred’s childhood home was very chaotic by many accounts and full of eccentricities. George Tennyson tutored his sons in classical and modern languages to prepare them for university. Before Alfred left for Cambridge, he had already published a book with his brother Charles titled,” Poems By Two Brothers”. Many gifted undergraduates drifted towards him and encouraged him to write poetry seriously. Unfortunately, Alfred had to leave college in 1831 due to financial issues. He published a few works while he w... ... middle of paper ... ... as beauty. “ No Second Troy” showed how women can be as determined as any man and work hard towards the goals they seek for themselves even to the chagrin of those who love them. Works Cited Lowell, Edward J. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 28, (May, 1892 - May, 1893), pp. 420-432 Hogan, J.J. W.B Yeats. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 28, No. 109 (Mar., 1939), pp. 35-48 O’Brian, Lynne B. Male Heroism: Tennyson's Divided View. Victorian Poetry, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 171-182 Tennyson, Alfred. "Mariana." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. E. New York: Norton, 2012. 1159-61. Print. Yeats, W.B. "No Second Troy." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. F. New York: Norton, 2012. 2091. Print.
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. "In Memoriam A. H. H." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd ed., Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1974. 1042-84.
...hows the distance between the hero and Victorian society in his poetry by commenting on this situation with mythological or legendary figures. He writes of people in a fantastic past that were once revered but are antiquated in Victorian society. Though he seems to be in concurrence with Carlyle in his expression that the hero is necessity, he is not wrong when he says that the Hero as Poet is unsuccessful in Victorian society. This is shown in the want of an audience or following for this timeless hero, and also in the distancing Tennyson creates with fictitious heroes in his poetry, such as King Arthur, Ulysses, the Lady of Shalott, Tithonus and Sir Galahad. This demonstrates the Victorian disconnection with the heroic, their uncoupling with the spiritual with the secular, and emphasizes the tragic nature of Carlyle's hero in Victorian society's period of crisis.
I do not know how without being culpably particular I can give my Reader a more exact notion of the style in which I wished these poems to be written, than by informing him that I have at all times endeavored to look steadily at my subject; consequently, I hope that there is in these Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. Something I must have gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense; but it has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets.
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism Volume 4 pp 40 GrahamsMagazine (1850) Vol. XXXVI, No 2, page 167. (Author unknown).
An analysis of Owen’s Dulce et Decorum est and Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light brigade
In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,?
Yeats, William, Butler. "The Second Coming." The Longman Anthology British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. Longman. New York. 2000. 2329.
Tennyson was born in 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England; the fourth of twelve children (Everett). After leaving grammar school in 1820, his father, a rector, managed to give him a broad literary education, despite difficult conditions at home (“Tennyson…”). As a precocious young man, Alfred learned to write in styles of John Milton, and Alexander Pope, as well as established an exceptional understanding of Elizabethan dramatic verse (Everett). William Wallace Robson says that by Tennyson’s early teens, “Lord Byron was a dominant influence on the young Tennyson” (Robson). Such an influence gave way to the young Tennyson’s The Devil and the Lady, a previously unpublished collection of poems, later published in 1930 with clear inspiration from his favorite childhood writers. Perhaps Tennyson’s father should have been an English teacher instead of a clergyman.
In an essay on feminist criticism, Linda Peterson of Yale University explains how literature can "reflect and shape the attitudes that have held women back" (330). From the viewpoint of a feminist critic, "The Lady of Shalott" provides its reader with an analysis of the Victorian woman's conflict between her place in the interior, domestic role of society and her desire to break into the exterior, public sphere which generally had been the domain of men. Read as a commentary on women's roles in Victorian society, "The Lady of Shalott" may be interpreted in different ways. Thus, the speaker's commentary is ambiguous: Does he seek to reinforce the institution of patriarchal society as he "punishes" the Lady with her death for her venture into the public world of men, or does he sympathize with her yearnings for a more colorful, active life? Close reading reveals more than one possible answer to this question, but the overriding theme seems sympathetic to the Lady. By applying "the feminist critique" (Peterson 333-334) to Tennyson's famous poem, one may begin to understand how "The Lady of Shalott" not only analyzes, but actually critiques the attitudes that held women back and, in the end, makes a hopeful, less patriarchal statement about the place of women in Victorian society.
Throughout many of his poems, W.B Yeats portrayed important aspects of Ireland’s history especially around the 1900’s when Ireland was fighting for independence. During this time, Ireland was going through an agonizing time of struggle. The Employers’ Federation decided to lock out their workers in order to break their resistance. By the end of September, 25,000 workers were said to have been affected. Although the employers’ actions were widely condemned, they refused to consider negotiation or compromise with the Union. His readers are able to see how Yeats reflects the political, cultural, and societal atmosphere in Ireland during the early 1900’s. The poems September 1913 and Easter 1916 both reflect the political, cultural, and societal atmospheres that were found in Ireland around the 1900’s.
Owens, Coilin D., and Peter C. Holloran. " William Butler Yeats." Literary Reference Center Plus. Critical Survey Of Drama, Second Revised Edition, 2003. Web.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
The.. E. J. Chiasson, "Tennyson's 'Ulysses'—A Re-Interpretation." Critical Essays on the Poetry of Tennyson. Ed. John Killham (New York: 1960), 164–173. Mazzeno, Laurence W. "Alfred, Lord Tennyson."
Even though both John Keats’s “To Autumn” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” are about the same season, they are very dissimilar. Keats’s poem concentrates on the creating power of autumn, and makes it seem a gentle season, while in Shelley’s poem death is a repeating image, and shows autumn’s destroying power.
Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.