Discuss
Tennyson as representative Victorian poet with reference to the poems on your
syllabus.
Tennyson (1809-1892) was, as a
poet should be, an expositor of his age, and his age, that is Victorian
gratefully found its reflection in his glowing pages. Tennyson was a member of
a group of idealists who called themselves “Apostles”. This group embraced a
self- chosen prophetic mission to crusade for culture. A leading light in this
group was Hallam who later became Tennyson’s friend. Hallam was also Tennyson’s
critic as well as literary mentor. In his reviews of Tennyson’s first imported
collection, Poems Chiefly Lyrical (1831) is still important where Hallam
suggested that Tennyson would be the poet- representative of their age.
Although the Victorian period was
outwardly marked by peace and increasing prosperity, intellectual and social
ferment was flowing underneath. From one angle it might be called the best of
time but for many the age also appeared to be the hard times. While much of
Tennyson’s work indirectly both reflects and recreates this ferment, in certain
texts he did not seek to address the social questions explicitly, though never
unequivocally.
By and large Tennyson is the
poetic voice of the Victorian England just as Chaucer is that of 14th
century England or Pope of the 18th century. Tennyson’s poetry as a
whole reflects the main tendencies of his age in all its varied interests: in
religion, in politics, in morals, in social life and in scientific pursuits.
But at the same time it must be noted that his thoughts were not indeed very
profound or revolutionary. Nor were they intellectually critical like Arnold’s.
Moreover, there is, in Tennyson, a looking back to an idealized past often
medieval, which is partly temperamental and partly due to the overpowering
influence of within the early Victorian period of Thomas Carlyle.
