Show how Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’
handles the Greek Legend in the dramatic monologue form.
Answer: A dramatic
monologue is a lyric poem in which a single imaginary speaker or a historical
personage expresses his thoughts and feelings to an imaginary silent audience. In
this kind of poem a single person, who is apparently not the poet, utters the
entire poem in a specific situation at a critical moment. This person addresses
and interacts with one or more other people, but we know of the presence of the
audience and its reaction from the clues in the utterance of the speaker. A
dramatic monologue concentrates on the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Robert
Browning is well known for his dramatic monologues. His ‘My Last Duchess,”
Andrea del Sarto,” ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Tittonus,” T.S
Eliot’s ‘The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ are some of the best known
dramatic monologues. Tennyson like another Victorian genius Robert Browing is
good at composing dramatic monologues. His well known poem Ulysses is an
excellent example of dramatic monologue in which he adopts a classical hero
Ulysses or Odysseus as the main character for his work. Here he tries to focus
on the adventurous as well as knowledge seeking spirit of Ulysses. But the
philosophy of life given through the mouth of Ulysses is actually Tennyson’s
own philosophy.
In the poem Ulysses,
Ulysses is supposed to be speaking and expressing his thoughts and feelings to
the silent listeners. He is standing before the royal palace of Ithaca and
speaks before the mariners, who had been his fellow sojourners during his long
journey to Troy. The monologue begins with his cynical remarks towards life. .
It little profits
that an idle king
By this still hearth,
among these barren crags,
That hoard and steep
and feed and know not me.
