Course tutor: Dr. Adrian Radu Office: M12 Email: aradu@lett.ubbcluj.ro Web: www.lett.ubbcluj.

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Matthew Arnold

Arnolds Poetry
roots in the classical writings of the Greeks

neoclassical influences by the Romantics such as Wordsworth late Romantic his poems are melancholic, deeply personal (intimate), introspective, full of sentimental pessimism and nostalgia cultivates the soliloquy / intimate confession his poems are solitary meditations in evocative surroundings

Dover Beach
meditation on the loss of public values,
the great ages are gone, faith is lost

what is left is but private affections, the little society of

love and friendship

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

one of the most influential

poets of the age (Poet Laureate) melancholic figure tendency to withdraw in the past and far-off lands loyal subject occasional poetry lines which resound with music and harmony creator of remarkable verse technique:
the dramatic monologue the English idyll

Work
direct prolongation of Romanticism
discipline of form elaborate ornamental effects

intellectual refinement

The Lady of Shalott

artistic creation and the condition of the artist

condemned to live in solitary confinement from everyday world the Lady is an artist, a weaver her real world is a mirror above her loom her attempt to escape into the real world ends tragically

The Palace of Art

about the condition of the artist a sequel that

completes The Lady of Shalott imprisonment in the world of spirituality and pleasure, symbolised by the Palace of Art the message is that life in such a world is impossible life has to be lived directly

The Lotos-Eaters
explores the theme of withdrawal
the sailors express the will to escape into an euphoric

and hedonistic world of sensations and pleasures the land of the Lotos-Eaters is depicted as a terrestrial paradise

Ulysses
a dramatic monologue
Ulysses is Dantes Ulysses as he appears in his Inferno. he is not willing to abandon active life even at old age

life has to be lived to the full at any age

In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
series of elegiac poems of 131 sections with a Prologue

and an Epilogue caused by the death of Arthur Hallam self-therapy the meaning of life and death moves from the shadow cast by death to the light of hope psychological recovery from despair to optimistic expectation reflects the ages crisis of belief and marks the poets coming to terms with God

Maud (1855)
a monodrama a study of gruesome psychology that

provoked a storm of protest for its morbidity and violence the exploitation of the theme of madness reality is distorted by subjectivity lyric passages and violent rhetorics

The Idylls of the King (1857-1889)

the project of re-writing the legends about King

Arthur 12 interconnected poems: 10 central poems flanked by The Coming of Arthur and The Passing of Arthur the legends are wrapped in a poetical and hued veil the theme is heroism, its dissolution and ruin after the introduction of evil to Camelot (adulterous love)

The Idylls of the King (1889)

the passage is from warm colours in the beginning to the mist and cold of winter
the form is the idyll written in blank verse

the form is not always appropriate: Tennyson cast romantic material into a Victorian moral mould
highly stylized and idealised dignified attitude

remarkable is the musicality of the language and the images like coloured miniatures bathed in gentle light

The Passing of Arthur

Then Sir Bedevere cried: Ah my lord Arthur, what shall become of me, now ye go from me and leave me here alone among mine enemies? Comfort thyself, said the king, and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in; for I will go into the vale of Avilion to heal me of my grievous wound: and if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul. But ever the queens and ladies wept and shrieked, that it was pity to hear. And as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and wailed, and so took the forest. (Th. Malory, Le Morte dArthur)

Crossing the bar

written on the back of an envelope as Tennyson was crossing the Solent to the Isle of Wight

the poets epitaph

the last poem in each of Tennysons

published volumes

Assessment
continuator of Romanticism of Wordsworth, Byron

and Keats he is a master of creating a mood, communicating a state of feeling lines of exquisite variety and melody readership is educated middle-classes his themes turn round the doubts and difficulties of an age when Christian Faith was questioned by science and modern progress