Although I missed class this past Wednesday (which I'm very upset about; Robert Browning is one of my favorite poets), I hope I can discuss Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold without sounding foolish.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott" reminded me of Poe's "The Raven." The two poems are stylistically similar in cadence, if not in subject matter. Tennyson makes many references to nature in his work, including in his images of nature fields, plains, islands, flowers, and animals. The poem is also a bit fantastical and includes many references to the fictional kingdom of Camelot. The Lady seems to be an allusion to Queen Guinevere, with whom Sir Lancelot, one of the Knights of the Round Table in King Arthur's court, fell in love. Lancelot, with whom the queen is very close even before their torrid love affair occurs, says of her, "'She has a lovely face; God in his mery lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott'" (1958). Tennyson provides an interesting, if not entirely refreshing, viewpoint on the legends of Camelot (one wonders if he plagiarized or if he truly had not read Malory's Morte Darthur).
Tennyson's other poem "Ulysses" is another retelling of the hero of Homer's epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. This piece sounds much less like a child's nursery rhyme when read aloud. However, since being presented with these two poems, I wonder if Tennyson specialized in retellings of famous stories, or if his original poetry was well-received also.
Robert Browning, as mentioned previously, is one of my favorite poets. I have a collection of poetry that he and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote in relation to each other and about their marriage. It's quite beautiful. And I was very excited to reread two of my favorite poems, "Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess." The first is written in sort of odd sets of five lines per stanza, with the rhyme scheme ababb. The images throughout the poem are also of nature and a beautiful woman, as Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" is, but instead of being told in third-person point of view, "Porphyria's Lover" is narrated by the lover himself. The poem ends quite brutally; Porphyria is strangled with "one long yellow string" (her hair) wrapped "three times her little throat around" (2055). She is murdered for cheating on him; sometimes she cannot control her passions and though he knows she loves him, he has grown weary of having the knowledge that, earlier in the evening, she lay in another's arms. Now that her lover has murdered her, he has her with him forever.
"My Last Duchess" is written in a similar way. The quatrains feature end rhymes, the rhyme scheme being aabb. The narrator is showing off a painting of his last duchess, a piece painted masterfully by an imaginary expert artist. He explains how his former wife smiled for others as she smiled for him, or how she thanked other men with a little too much gratitude. The hint of murder in "My Last Duchess" is not nearly as obvious as it is in "Porphyria's Lover," but the narrator explains that he "gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together" (2058, 2059). He most likely instructed someone to kill her so that her blood would not stain his hands; that, or he wanted to give her the last satisfaction she would feel by having another man at her beck and call, even though that last man, not her husband, would be the one to murder her.
I'd never heard of Matthew Arnold before reading his poem "Dover Beach," and I'm not sure how I feel about him as a writer yet. I'll have to read more of his poetry to be able to decide whether I appreciate his style of writing or not. But in this poem, he too makes use of allusion with his references to Sophocles and the Aegean Sea. Allusions to ancient Greek culture seems to be somewhat of a theme in Romantic and early Victorian writing.
Good observations! Two things we covered in class:
ReplyDeletea) Browning was not very well-received during his time but is heralded by the Modernists as being the progenitor of truly Modern writing. He basically invents the "dramatic lyric" in poetry, and this is based on his theatrical background. The poems we read this week were short, but notice that each one represents the totality of a play - there is a background, characters with dialogue or monologue, and a resolution. One thing we also noted in Browning's work (important for Victorian men) is the increased violence and brutality as a kind of "acting out" to feminine strength and seductiveness. We will talk more about this in upcoming weeks.
b) Arnold's "Dover Beach" is basically a response to the Victorian Period. The main question being asked by writers of the period is whether or not "Progress" (i.e. industrial progress, increased freedoms and rights for all people) really leads to happiness. With Progress also seemed to come more war and economic troubles, as well as the total death of Christianity and spirituality. The pessimism about Christianity no longer being a "girdle" that surrounds and envelopes England is apparent in his poem. Notice that the sea is called a "Sea of Faith" - in the end, Arnold begs his companion to be forever faithful, as love will be the sole thing to hold life together now that religion is gone from humanity.
Thank you for the information - I'm surprised Browning was not successful during the time in which he wrote.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll have to pick up some books on how historical events (the breaking apart of the Catholic Church, etc.) influenced the writing of that time period. I'm very interested in the connections between history and literature.
He was successful (more than his wife in fact, in the long run), but initially his wife was more well-known, so we have to wonder what effect this (plus her being a bit older than him) would have had. His earlier poems were very personal and "confession-like," and he decided never to write personal poetry again after those poems were rejected and mocked. I think that is why he stuck with theatrical works.
ReplyDeleteThere's a great book on Decadence and Catholicism that might interest you, and plenty of works on Christianity and socialist movements of the time :)