Cambridge Authors

In her book On Form Angela Leighton has described Tennyson's as one of the nineteenth century's 'most memorable, sensuous, aesthetic voices'. According to Leighton, it is Tennyson 'who pushes language almost as far as it will go into music, whose rhymes and echoes ring on the other side of sense... this musical compulsion is not a search for metaphysical self-validation, but a feeling for form as a thing to be held as literally as possible against the threat of formlessness'. Considering how Leighton's perspective (in which Tennyson's music does not respond to metaphysical questions but simply celebrates 'form') might relate to or differ from Griffiths' or Tucker's, take a look at this single stanza from lyric 114 of In Memoriam and consider what it might be suggesting about the idea of 'form':

Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.

Encouraging readers to think about 'the attitude towards form expressed in the poem itself', the literary critic J.C.C. Mays highlights passages like the one above and claims that 'Tennyson's attitude towards form in general applies to poetic form in particular'. What do you think 'the attitude towards form' expressed in lyric 114 might be and how do you think this attitude might apply to 'poetic form in particular'? Interestingly, this stanza both asks 'who shall fix... [Knowledge's] pillars' and refuses to 'fix' sturdy structural pillars of its own: at the end of each of its first three lines, Tennyson employs a poetic device called enjambment, which means that its sentences do not end where its lines end, but rapidly flow on to the following line (in 'Who shall rail / Against her beauty?' for example). By making use of enjambment in this way, as he expresses this claim about the beauty of knowledge, what do you think Tennyson might be suggesting about the relationship between faith and form?

Throughout this very hopeful stanza in lyric 114 (a stanza in which the speaker expresses some hope that 'Knowledge... may... mix / With men and prosper') the poem's form is not restrictively fixed; formal constraints, such as the need for units of sense to be completed by the end of each line, do not obstruct this faithful outburst. At the same time, however, that physical intelligence which structures the poem in this way (using enjambment so as to formally reflect the speaker's faithfulness) does seem to possess that positive 'feeling for form' to which Angela Leighton refers: this stanza does not have a fixed form, but it does have a fitting form, a structure that suits or a music that matches its meaning. The unfixed form of the stanza we've considered in lyric 114 celebrates the developing spiritual strength of the poet. What do you think Tennyson's attitude, then, towards poetic 'form' and its relation to spiritual 'faith' might be?

To help us think about this problem, let's consider another lyric from In Memoriam, within which Tennyson contrasts his own formless kind of faith with his sister's more orthodox Christianity: 'O thou', the poet addresses himself:

that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.'

In these stanzas from lyric 33 of In Memoriam, Tennyson seems to be suggesting that some people find fixed forms to be necessary in enabling them to lead 'melodious days'. It appears that beautiful forms must first be sustained if individuals are ever to be able to find faith (and keep hold of it) at all. If certain forms are to be maintained purely because they enable people to live 'melodious days', it would appear to be the case that Tennyson values music more than meaning; even as some individuals (including the poet, for example) neither find themselves able to overcome their urge to ponder metaphysical questions, nor believe it to be necessary to commit themselves to traditional forms of faith, the ultimate goal for everyone appears to be to attain some kind of harmonious formal composure. The speaker neither has the ability to live 'melodious days' that his sister has, nor believes himself able to attain equilibrium by the same formal means (the same simple Christian faith) as has enabled her to attain that ability. At the same time, however, the speaker does not think it would be right to 'confuse' his sister's harmonious state by voicing his own doubts to her, and sets about (especially in lyric 114, as we saw above) attempting to acquire an equivalent state of harmony by fittingly developing new forms (both of faith and poetry) of his own.

According to J.C.C. Mays, 'one of the themes' of In Memoriam 'is a winning through to confidence in form, to an ability to sustain it by faith'. Moreover, 'Tennyson's gradual winning of confidence in form and all else is presented dramatically, as it happens, and not as an imposed conclusion'. Let's take a look at lyric 87 of In Memoriam and begin to think about how it might be presenting 'Tennyson's gradual winning of confidence in form... dramatically'. In this lyric, Tennyson is describing having listened to Arthur Hallam's voice when they were both Cambridge students, a few years before Arthur died. As you read it, think about what the lyric might be suggesting about the speaking voice, about music, and about the process of developing faith in 'form':

A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly-wise.'

Here Tennyson seems to be bringing together a lot of the ideas that we've been considering throughout these In Memoriam web-pages: the speaker gives 'a willing ear' to another's speaking voice; Tennyson again uses enjambment as a means of dramatising a flux of faith, as the voice of Hallam is said to be 'flowing free / From point to point, with power and grace/ And music'; just as it was measured language that, in lyric 95, enabled Tennyson to bridge the gap between the land of the living and that of the dead, so here it is the spoken word which enables 'the God within' Hallam to 'light his [mortal] face'. Keeping in mind what the poem appears to be suggesting about both music and artistic form's relation to faith, let's now compare what Tennyson suggests about the development of 'music in the bounds of law' in the lyric above, with what he suggests about measured (and measuring) 'Aeonian music' in the ninety-fifth lyric (which we looked at on the second of the In Memoriam web-pages):

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd
About heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance -
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became.'

'Form' - according to J.C.C. Mays - 'seems a necessary evil: faith can express itself only through form, and yet form circumscribes and distorts the expression of faith'. Do you agree? As was observed at the beginning of this study of In Memoriam, Tennyson suggests that his words are 'vague' and claims that it is 'hard to frame' authentic expressions of faith in 'forms of speech' that are 'matter-moulded'. Conversely however, lyrics 87 and 95 have both suggested that it is only 'word by word', 'line by line' and 'from point to point, with power and grace' that language (and language only) can enable individuals to develop and experience faith in the first place. Just as it is only Hallam's (measured) speaking voice that creates 'music in the bounds of law' in lyric 87, so it is only Hallam's own 'matter-moulded words' that enable Tennyson - at last - to catch the sound of 'Aeonian music measuring out / The steps of Time' in lyric 95.

In Memoriam does appear to be suggesting that Time's steps really are measured out by 'Aeonian music', and that this in turn is keeping human life within 'the bounds of law', just as its own iambics are being measured out by the poem's fitting form. However, this lyric is representative of In Memoriam as a whole in that it dramatizes the general difficulty, as well as the transitory possibility, of acquiring faith through confidence in form. 'Tennyson's whole meaning', we may want to conclude with J.C.C. Mays, 'is that faith is not a constant'.

Further Thinking

These In Memoriam web-pages have provided introductions to aspects of this famous and important poem, and to the exploration of music's relation to meaning in Tennyson. On this website you'll find a number of resources devoted to the contexts in which it was written. To find out how these thoughts on In Memoriam relate to 'Music and Meaning' in Tennyson more generally you could head for the unabridged 'Music and Meaning' web-pages.

Over the previous two sections we've begun to think about how what Tennyson says about music, speech and language in In Memoriam might reveal some important facts about his thoughts and feelings concerning questions of immortality and the nature of human progress. Indeed, in an important chapter, 'Tennyson's Voice', of a book called The Printed Voice of Victorian Poetry, the Cambridge academic Eric Griffiths claims that 'the metaphysical debates of Tennyson's time did... stir the surface of his verse...; his musicality is attuned to the time's questioning, remote as that music is from the public manners of intellectual exposition'. What do you think Eric Griffiths means here? In saying that Tennyson's poetry is quite literally 'attuned' 'to the time's questioning', he appears to be suggesting that there is a link between the 'music' of Tennyson's poetry and the general search for 'meaning' which characterises the nineteenth century.

'Most particularly', Griffiths continues, 'the music [of Tennyson's poetry] asks, "what is it to be embodied?"'. 'Tennyson's voice sounds as if the body thought'. In this section we'll be taking a look at two more In Memoriam lyrics, numbers 86 and 7, and asking what it might mean to consider the body as thinking and how it might be possible for music or poetry to present the human body in this way. It is pertinent that Eric Griffiths says that In Memoriam celebrates 'such skills of embodied persons as the having of good lungs'. You could try reading this next lyric aloud and thinking about how both its form and its content might be functioning:

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."'

According to Eric Griffiths, this section 'is hard to read aloud'. Did you find it difficult to read aloud, and if so, why do you think this was? Griffith says that it is difficult 'because it has to be taken in one breath and requires good lungs.' 'Consider the effect of attempting to speak this poem in a single breath', he continues; if you haven't already, perhaps you could try this now. 'Even the best lungs will be weary at the close of the section', Griffiths says; even the best lungs 'will have the air left only to whisper the word which is the destination of this eloquent trajectory, "Peace"'. Griffiths continues: 'breathing the reader's last, the word can sound like the peace that death is, the peace of "Rest in peace"'. As he sees it, Part 86 of In Memoriam expresses, 'in the metaphysical depths of melody nineteenth-century philosophers often heard in music, the longing to be out of Nature, to be dead, and expresses simultaneously a billowing delight in the performing breath as a sign of life'.

So as to extend our analysis of the possible meaning of music in In Memoriam, let's now briefly consider the seventh lyric in the poem, in which the speaker discusses the absence of his beloved friend. As you read the lyric, think about how it might be responding to the question that Griffiths raises, namely 'what is it to be embodied?':

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more -
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Throughout the first two stanzas and in the opening line of stanza three, Tennyson's emphasis is on Arthur's absence and his own inability to act without the presence of this loved one: the poet's heart 'used to beat / So quickly' whenever he visited this house, but now that Arthur has gone it does not. In the second line of the third stanza, however, 'the noise of life begins again'. 'What revives', according to Griffiths, 'is not the friend... but the beat of regular iambics and the "noise of life", the daily round, they represent.' The music of the poem (its metre) revives, but the 'beat' of the lonely figure's heart does not; indeed, according to Griffiths 'the metrical impetus disappoints his hopes even as it reasserts compositional skill'.

[Go on to Music and Meaning in Tennyson's In Memoriam (4): 'Aeonian Music']

Take a look at this extract from Part 5 of In Memoriam, and ask yourself what Tennyson is suggesting about 'words':

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

If Tennyson here suggests that he sometimes finds it sinful to express his grief 'in words', if words always 'half conceal the Soul within', and if words can only ever convey what a person intends to communicate 'in outline and no more', then perhaps 'measured language' ought to be written off as a severely limited 'form' of expression? If you think this might be what Tennyson is suggesting in Part 5 of In Memoriam, what do you think about these four stanzas from Part 95 of the poem, in which Tennyson describes his experience of re-reading a piece of writing that Arthur Hallam composed before his death?:

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance -
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became.

The poet does again assert that his own 'words' are 'vague' or inadequate, in the last of these four stanzas. However, Tennyson claims that it was 'word by word, and line by line' that his dead friend's living soul was 'flash'd' upon his own. What do you think Tennyson is trying to communicate about this mysterious 'medium', language, which half reveals and half conceals the soul; that is both inescapably 'vague' and yet is the only force which can enable real communion between the living and the dead? Furthermore, what is the significance of Tennyson's claim that his 'forms of speech' are 'matter-moulded'?

Most importantly for us perhaps, how - in this ninety-fifth part of the poem - does Tennyson relate the idea of ' music' to that experience which is mediated through language, and how, in turn, might this music and this experience be related to the idea that  'mind and soul' might be brought into better accord, to make 'one' vaster 'music'?

Follow the link below and we'll start both to explore some possible answers to these questions and to think about what relates them to our broader ideas on Music and Meaning in Tennyson.

[Go on to Music and Meaning in Tennyson's In Memoriam (3): The 'Speaking Voice']

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.

Consider these lines from the Prologue to In Memoriam, and particularly the music being imagined. How does Tennyson suggest this 'one music' might be made, and what do you think he means?

In Memoriam - the most famous of Tennyson's poems - is a tribute to Tennyson's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who suddenly died of cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna, 1833. As is clear from the above quotation, this 131-part poem also tackles some much broader questions concerning nineteenth century religion and science (for more information on these issues see the 'Tennyson in Context' section of the website).

Keeping in mind what Tennyson says about letting 'knowledge grow from more to more' in the poem's 'Prologue', let's now take a look at the opening stanzas of the first part of poem itself:

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears.

If Tennyson is saying - in this first part of the poem - that he no longer believes 'men may rise on stepping stones... to higher things', do you think this complicates his hope that knowledge may 'grow from more to more' and make a 'vaster' music than before? Over the next few web-pages, we'll consider what In Memoriam might be suggesting both about the relation between faith and form (forms of religious faith on the one hand, and literary form on the other) and about the nature of language.

[Go on to Music and meaning in Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' (2): 'Measured Language']

These four pages have been extracted from the larger 'Music and Meaning' resource. Here graduate editor Simon Calder explores the ways in which sound and sense relate to one another in In Memoriam, Tennyson's poem about the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. At times here the music of poetry seems capable of making profound connections; but this can also seem a fleeting hope.

This selected resource is divided into four sections, which you can access in any order using the menu below -- though, obviously, the experience will be more coherent if you work through the articles consecutively, starting from the beginning.

1. One Music of 'Mind and Soul' in In Memoriam (1850)

2. 'Measured Language' and In Memoriam (1850)

3. Tennyson's 'Speaking Voice' in In Memoriam (1850)

4. 'Aeonian Music' in In Memoriam (1850)

If you would prefer to read through the whole of the 'Music and Meaning' resource, click here.

In this essay undergraduate Emma Leadbetter describes how Tennyson won a prestigious student prize for his poem 'Timbuctoo' - a formative episode in his early poetic life.

Tennyson was already making a name for himself in Cambridge literary circles, but it was his future friends - most of them members of the society - who were immediate favourites on the announcement of the annual Cambridge poetry prize in 1829. The Chancellor's Gold Medal was awarded for the best ode or poem in heroic couplets on a designated subject. In 1828, the prize had been awarded to Christopher Wordsworth, brother of William, for a poem on 'The Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Buonaparte'. The following year, anonymous entries were invited on the subject of 'Timbuctoo'. Tennyson's friends Arthur Hallam and Richard Monckton Milnes announced their intention of entering, and both were confident of success.

Tennyson had already published Poems by Two Brothers, a joint venture with his brother Charles, although it had received little attention in the national press. Despite this albeit limited success, Tennyson was reluctant to compete even in friendly rivalry against his peers. His father wrote to him, encouraging him to compose an entry, and in the end Tennyson agreed unwillingly to revise an old, unpublished piece called 'Armageddon'. It was the first entry for the Chancellor's Gold Medal ever to have been written in blank verse, rather than traditional heroic couplets. (J. Cuming Walters, who wrote a biography of Tennyson in 1897 (see Works Cited below), notes that the organisers had worried that nothing obvious rhymed with the word 'Timbuctoo'.)

The subject of 'Timbuctoo' was very topical, at the beginning of European colonization of central Africa. The legends and mythologies of Africa, as well as its landscape, animals, and inhabitants, were fascinating to the British public. Timbuctoo, in what is now Mali, had been visited by a Scottish explorer named A.G. Laing in 1826. Tennyson's poem feeds on the mythology of its imagined setting, as the poet describes himself standing on a vantage point looking down to the sea:

I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe.

The exotic and landscape draws the poet to thoughts of mankind's reliance on legend and mystery, which connect us with the ancient past as well as giving us hope for the future. Tennyson muses on the symbiotic relationship between human thoughts and the physical world.

Looking out at this seemingly ancient and otherworldy landscape encourages us to fantasise about its mythological origins:

I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the Sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.

The scientific explanation of the formation of the pillars the poet is describing sits alongside the story of the giant who built them. But the poem's tone is often one of loss, as we are forced to acknowledge that Timbuctoo's aura of mystery and secrecy is not intrinsic but is created in the mind of the onlooker.

The legends of Timbuctoo, Atlantis and Eldorado had their being in the heart of Man, and the exploration of the real Timbuctoo can only destroy their supernatural or legendary charm:

And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of Man
As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then
A center'd glory-circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name
Imperial Eldorado roof'd with gold:
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.

The last line's poignancy comes from its use of the past tense: '[... despite all shocks of Change...] / Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die'. The line seems to suggest that the steady hope which stories and fantasies provided to men in the past is now coming to an end, and that the shocks of 'Change' and 'Accident' are finally taking their toll on our ability to keep faith in legends, even a modern legend like that of Timbuctoo.

As the poet looks out over the African plains in incomprehension and confusion a spirit appears to him, and helps him to see the past and present glories of nature and ancient civilisation, combined in the physical reality of the town and its surroundings. But the poet's heightened perception of the glory of Timbuctoo, a glory which equals that of the ancient world and which is compared to Heaven, is only temporary. The Spirit mournfully predicts the future of Timbuctoo once it comes into contact with the too real and human influences of Europe.

Oh City! oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-wall'd, Barbarian settlements.
How chang'd from this fair City!

Needless to say, Tennyson's strange but inspired work won the prize - the examiners preferring his simplicity of style (if not argument!) to Hallam's complicated entry in . The poem was published in the Trinity college journal and in The Cambridge Chronicle and Journal on June 12th 1829. It was perhaps as a result of Tennyson's win that he entered into a real friendship with Arthur Hallam, who became a great support to Tennyson in his literary endeavours. Tennyson's achievement in winning the Gold Medal threw him into the spotlight, and further enhanced his standing in the eyes of the young intellectual set at Cambridge. Hallam wrote that:

My friend Tennyson's poem, which got the prize, will be thought by the ten sober persons aforementioned twice as absurd as mine [. . .] The splendid imaginative power that pervades it will be seen through all hindrances. I consider Tennyson as promising fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, perhaps of the country.

There are two apocryphal stories (both told by J. Cuming Walters) related to Tennyson's 'Timbuctoo'. The first is that Tennyson entered two pieces with the same title, one designed to please the conservative examiners, and one to please himself. It was the latter which won the medal. The second story is that one of the judges wrote "v.q." (very queer) on the manuscript, which was misread as "v.g." (very good). Whatever the truth of these slightly spiteful anecdotes, they show the extent to which Tennyson's poem attracted interest inside and outside the university. Over the next fifty years Tennyson had to come to terms with the positives and negatives of drawing the attention of the British press. His 'horror of publicity' (as Hallam Tennyson called it) showed itself even at this early age, for he refused to read his poem in the University Senate House, as was tradition, and instead obtained permission from the Vice-Chancellor for his friend Charles Merivale to read it in his place.

Further Reading

To research this essay Emma Leadbetter made use of nineteenth-century books in the Cambridge University Library, in particular: A Complete Collection of the English Poems which have obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal (London, Macmillan; 1859); J. Cuming Walters, Tennyson: Poet, Philosopher, Idealist (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co, 1893); and Hallam Tennyson, A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1897).

Further Thinking

Hallam thought his friend's poem was extremely 'promising'. What promising qualities do you see in it? What aspects of it seem like the later Tennyson?

'Timbuctoo' was written in order to win a prize - although it should be noted that it was an adaptation of an existing poem. Do you think that poems written to win prizes are as likely to be good as any other poem? More likely? Less likely?

In this essay, written when she was in her third year of undergraduate study, Emma Leadbetter describes the way in which Tennyson acquired the position of poet laureate, and what he made of it. Although in many ways he was an unconventional figure, his moderate politics and patriotism helped him make the position a success. The poems that he wrote in his official role have mixed reputations, but one in particular, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', is very well-known.

In 1850, Tennyson was awarded the title of Poet Laureate. Wordsworth had died in April of that year. The role of Laureate had changed a great deal over the reign of Queen Victoria, with Wordsworth only accepting the title on condition that he did not have to meet its customary requirements. He never produced work specifically on the commission of the royal family or the state in the seven years in which he held the position. His successor would have a lot to live up to, for Wordsworth was both very popular with the general public and in literary circles. However, there was also a growing mood of patriotism in Britain in the years running up to the in 1854, and it was felt by some that the more traditional aspects of the laureateship - such as commemorating royal and public events and celebrating the feats of the British military - were becoming more important, and should be taken on board by whoever was chosen for the role.

Perhaps surprisingly given his poetic achievements, Tennyson was not the obvious choice for the laureateship. At forty-one years old he was considered rather young for the honour, which was bestowed for life. There had been some speculation in the press as to the most likely candidates, and it was in fact Samuel Rogers, a leading literary figure of the time and friend of Wordsworth and Byron, who was first asked to succeed Wordsworth. The letter from Prince Albert to Rogers offering him the title tells us a great deal about the changing perception of what the role entailed:

Although the spirit of the times has put an end to the practice (at all times objectionable) of exacting laudatory odes from the holder of that office, the Queen attaches importance to its maintenance from its historical antiquity and the means it affords to the sovereign of a more personal connection with the poets of the country through one of their chiefs. (J. Cuming Walters, Tennyson: Poet, Philosopher, Idealist (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co, 1893) p. 75.)

The tentative approach shown by the in offering Rogers the laureateship is a sign of the potential candidate's reluctance to be restricted in his writing, either by the difficulties of working on commission or by the increased public interest which could prevent them from airing any unorthodox views. Like Wordsworth, Rogers' tendencies may have had a part in his unwillingness to become laureate. Unlike Wordsworth, however, Rogers actually refused the title, giving his old age as the reason (he was eighty-seven), and recommended Tennyson for the post.

In 1850 Tennyson was arguably at the height of his artistic success. His Poems (1842) and The Princess (1847) had both received favourable criticism, and earlier works such as 'Ulysses' (1833) remained popular. Tennyson had completed 'In Memoriam' in 1849 and it was published just before his appointment to laureate. He was also popular with his fellow poets. In public support of Tennyson's claim to the position, the poet religious view which was not compatible with standard Anglican Christianity, and he interested himself in what new evolutionary theorists were describing as the divide between God and Nature. (This website's resources on 'Tennyson and Science' and 'Tennyson and Religion' explore his views on these things.) Nevertheless, he was a real patriot who respected the royal family and felt great loyalty to his country and to the Empire. Furthermore it is said that even before his appointment the Queen had expressed admiration for his poetry.

Tennyson was invested as poet laureate on 19th November 1850, and presented at court on 6th March of the next year. His first act in the role was a dedicatory poem to the queen.

Revered, beloved-O you that hold
A nobler office upon earth
Than arms, or power of brain, or birth
Could give the warrior kings of old,
Victoria,-since your Royal grace
To one of less desert allows
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.

His poetic output throughout the laureateship was patchy, and frequently divided critical opinion. Thoroughly fulfilling the public side of his role, he published some thirty patriotic and commemorative poems alongside some of his most famous and ambitious works such as Maud and Idylls. Modern critics such as Christopher Ricks and Robert Hill mark out his 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington' as an example of his best commemorative writing. Hill calls it 'one of the very few first-rate pieces of occasional verse in the language' but notes that it was by contemporary critics. Despite this criticism it remained a favourite piece of Tennyson's; and the last line, 'God accept him, Christ receive him!',

Of all the occasional pieces written by Tennyson, the most famous is , which achieved universal acclaim both on publication and over the course of Tennyson's life. The story of its composition is told in Hallam Tennyson's Memoirs:

On Dec 2nd he wrote 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' in a few minutes, after reading the description in the Times in which occurred the phrase "some one had blundered", and this was the origin of the metre of the poem.

Tennyson also wrote that the distinctive metre used throughout the poem - one of its most defining features and certainly a reason for its success and longevity - was influenced by the phrase, which appears verbatim in the poem:

1.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
'Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Despite Tennyson's anecdote, however, many modern critics have found similarities between 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and , published in 1605. It is interesting to note that in his 1855 revision to the poem, the line 'Someone had blunder'd' is removed - although Tennyson did later restore it, under the encouragement of who called it . The battle at Balaklava captured the imagination of the British public, and made a strong impression on Tennyson. Speaking of his poetic tribute to the Light Brigade, he said that . After the poem's publication in The Examiner in December 1854, copies were sent to buoy the spirits of troops still fighting in the Crimea.

Queen Victoria's admiration of Tennyson's work only increased over the period of his laureateship, and in 1884 he was made Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth and Freshwater. He accepted a peerage from Prime Minister William Gladstone in 1883, a decision which was more likely made to secure the future prosperity of his son, rather than from any real interest in politics. He avoided party allegiance, had a liberal and moderate political ideology, and shared many views with Queen Victoria herself. However, he remained a public figure and continued to write on many subjects until his death on 6^th October 1892. The Queen wrote her personal condolences to his son and The Prince of Wales made a request that the coffin should be draped with the Union Flag. His funeral in Westminster Abbey was a national event and there was a feeling that no suitable successor could be found amongst his contemporaries; indeed, the position fell vacant for four years before Alfred Austin was appointed. Many of the newspaper reports of the funeral turn on the laureate's devotion to his crown and country:

Very striking was the evidence that the funeral was of one whom the whole educated nation - rich and poor, noble and simple - loved and honoured [. . .] Tennyson gained that mark of supreme excellence which belongs to those who sing for all who can understand [. . .] Here is a poet who does not want merely to amuse men, to make them an earthly paradise of words, or to lead them into an enchanted garden, but one who claims to take his part in civil endeavour, and to serve the nation, if not with war-cries or Acts of Parliament, yet with a gift of song that teaches the duty of the citizen to his State. (Hallam Tennyson, Memoir, in Bevis, ed., Lives of Victorian Literary Figures)

Further Thinking

'The Charge of the Light Brigade' seems to try to capture the nobility of soldiers even when they are engaged in a mistaken and fruitless attack. How do you, as a modern reader, in a culture where well-known poets do not often line up to praise military achievements, respond to Tennyson's patriotic sympathy for the war and its soldiers? (You could look at some of the many poems about modern wars that can be found on the web. A site like http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/ features poems by amateur poets, many of them impressive and moving: evidently war and poetry still have a relationship.)

When you read further into Tennyson's work, or indeed the resources on this site, you might find interests and attitudes that seem a long way from the mood of his laureate works. Do you think think that the various aspects of his work can hold together, or is it better to see poems like the ones mentioned here as occasional pieces written to fulfil a brief, rather than connected parts of his main body of work?

In this essay undergraduate Judith Jacob looks at what a contemporary reader made of Tennyson's work. A lot can be learned from the first critics of a poet's work. While their assumptions about literature may be very different from ours, they give a vivid sense of the literary world in which the poems first appeared.

One of nineteenth century England's most important literary critics was the writer and theologian Richard Holt Hutton (June 2, 1826 - September 9, 1897). He was joint editor of the popular liberal journal The Spectator, and also one of the most influential and best-respected journalists of his age. In his work he most often took a religious standpoint, writing in opposition to rational and agnostic viewpoints such as those put forward by the biologists T.H. Huxley, Charles Darwin, and literary critics such as Matthew Arnold.

The 1917 Cambridge History of English Literature dismissed Holt as an influential critic when it states that 'to purely aesthetic considerations he was not highly sensitive, and his criticisms are not, intrinsically, of very great value' (vol. 14, p. 156). However, it is important to look at the work of poets through the eyes of their contemporary critics and Tennyson is no exception. After all, the criticism, the readership and the poetry itself work together in an intricate discourse rather than separately and in isolation. Thus, a better way to look at Hutton's stance on Tennyson would be to acknowledge that while Hutton is much more interested in the moral improvement on offer in literature than modern critics tend to be, on the whole he provides some interesting and astute observations, and these observations are at least valuable historically, if not aesthetically.

Though we now take Tennyson for granted as a traditional and canonical poet, to a contemporary audience Tennyson's poetry was radically experimental in the ways it challenged standard linear narrative, especially in long and fragmentary poems such as In Memoriam and The Idylls. In his essay 'The Genius of Tennyson', Hutton recognises and criticises the difficulty that contemporary audiences experienced through Tennyson's poetry when he writes that 'an original poet is usually more or less unwelcome to those who have formed their own taste on older models' (A Victorian Spectator, p. 253). Hutton is reassuringly supportive of the 'original' style of Tennyson although he complains that Tennyson 'harps too much on the minor key' with an 'over-wrought pathos' (A Victorian Spectator, p. 255). This dislike of the 'minor key' provides little actual insight into the style, or overemphasis of style in the poetry, but ironically reveals Hutton's own emotional response to unrestrained sentiment and overflowing emotion. He is uncomfortable with Tennyson's melancholy and feels himself to be on safer ground when Tennyson is neatly bounded within poetic structures. Hutton writes that in 'Tithonus' and 'Ulysses' 'we see the artist at his highest point - the intensity of the feeling not allowed to overflow into any excess or redundancy of expression, but restrained' (A Victorian Spectator, p. 255).

The need for strong religious morality and fixed emotion that Hutton describes in 'The Genius of Tennyson' can be seen as symptomatic of a Victorian attitude to poetry and poetic minds. Often Victorian critics read poetry to explore the soundness, or otherwise, of the mind that produced it. (There is further information about this point on a useful page in the 'Victorian Web', which can be found at http://www.victorianweb.org/science/health/health13.html.) Hutton's readings of Tennyson will not provide the modern reader with groundbreaking aesthetic observances or close readings, but they are indispensable to anyone who wants a solid idea of Tennyson's work and the way it functioned within the Victorian discourse of literary thought and criticism.

Works Cited

A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. XIV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917). [Note that there is a newer edition of this literary history.]

Richard Holt Hutton, A Victorian Spectator: Uncollected Writings of R. H. Hutton, ed. Robert H. Tener and Malcolm Woodfield (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1989).

Further Thinking

Judith Jacob identifies some characteristics of Victorian criticism that most modern critics would not identify with, e.g. an interest in the soundness of the poet's mind, and an interest in the moral benefits of reading a particular work. Why do you think these are, or are not, valid interests for a critic?

Hutton may not read Tennyson like we read Tennyson, but perhaps his approach would have been more familiar to the poet than ours would be. Are there places in Tennyson's work where you think he seems to think a bit like Hutton?

Tennyson's Idylls of the King were illustrated with pioneering photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron. In this essay Claire Wilkinson introduces them and considers how poem and picture relate.

Julia Margaret Cameron was a pioneering photographer and a contemporary of Tennyson. The pair both lived in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, Cameron moving there in 1860 having visited Tennyson's estate on the island. (Later they would both appear in Virginia Woolf's 1923 play actually called Freshwater.) Photography was both a young art in Victorian England and a rapidly developing medium. The first photograph had been taken in 1826 (requiring eight hours to expose!), yet by the end of the nineteenth century the photographic film, which used similar technology to today's film cameras, had been invented. Cameron began taking photographs in 1863, after receiving a camera for her 48th birthday. She was late to begin learning her art, but quickly became known for her photographic skill. It was Cameron who illustrated Tennyson's Idylls of the King at the author's request, with photographs imitating oil paintings in the style of the Pre-Raphaelite painters.

Both Tennyson and Cameron were interested in the style, which had begun as a school of thought in painting. Essentially, Pre-Raphaelite artists aimed to create work which was a direct and sincere portrayal of the subject; they were also interested in the connections between art and (particularly Romantic) poetry. Whilst Tennyson was not directly connected to the Pre-Raphaelites (notable members included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founder of the movement, whose younger sister Christina Rossetti came to be very influenced by Pre-Raphaelite thought), we may notice some similarities between Tennyson's work and the movement's ethos. 'The Lady of Shalott', for example, is set in a rather vivid dreamscape (based on Arthurian Camelot), similar in its strangeness to the setting of Rossetti's . The poem is also concerned with the connections between art and life. The lady of the poem is cursed to remain in a tower and weave a representation of the world she sees reflected in a mirror:

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down on Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily.
(The Lady of Shalott, Part II stanza I, lines 37-43)

The world which the Lady of Shalott must imitate in her art is 'golden' and 'unclouded' when seen through the artist's mirror, yet when the curse is broken and the Lady leaves the tower, a different world is revealed; one which is 'dim' and 'raining'. Life will not imitate art; true art must imitate life. The Lady of Shalott thus accords with Pre-Raphaelite principles, despite being written sixteen years before the official formation of the movement.

Tennyson's Idylls of the King was a continuation of his fascination with the Arthurian themes seen in 'The Lady of Shalott'. A section of the poem was published as 'Morte D'Arthur' in 1842, and then expanded into a twelve-poem collection telling the tale of King Arthur. Cameron, by now a friend of Tennyson, admired the poem and created twelve photographs to accompany the text. The photographs appear in the 1875 book, Illustrations by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Other Poems.

The Julia Margaret Cameron Trust runs a museum and gallery at her former home, Dimbola Lodge on the Isle of Wight (http://www.dimbola.co.uk). The photographs reproduced below come from their collection and are reproduced with their permission. Others can be found online, e.g. at The Camelot Project (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/ - search under Cameron's name). In order to respect copyright, we have not included all the images here, but they are easily found. Here you will find the details of the image, the part of the poem it refers to, and some things to think about. In each case, try thinking about how Cameron has expressed Tennyson's language visually.

1. Julia Margaret Cameron, 'The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'

And Lancelot ever promised, but remain'd
And still they met and met. Again she said,
O Lancelot if thou love me get thee hence
(Idylls of the King, Book XI - l. 92-94)

Thinking Points:

'but remain'd': Can you find a suitable gesture in the photograph to suggest that Lancelot and Guinevere don't want to be parted?

'if thou love me get thee hence': Does Cameron attempt to express this desire of Guinevere's? If so, how?

Julia Margaret Cameron, 'The Little Novice and the Queen', plate XI from The Idylls of the King, albumen print 1874.

2. Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Queen Guinevere and the Little Novice'

So the stately Queen abode
For many a week, unknown, among the nuns;
Nor with them mix'd, nor told her name, nor sought,
Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift,
But communed only with the little maid,
Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness
Which often lured her from herself.
(Idylls of the King, Book XI - l. 144-150)

Thinking Points:

'stately': Consider the facial expressions of the people in the photograph. Guinevere's chin is held high, and her eyes are averted. Is this 'stately'?

'Wrapt in her grief': Does the clothing chosen for the models help to accentuate this concept of being 'wrapt'?

'babbling heedlessness': Do you think that Cameron conveys the 'babbling heedlessness' of the child well?

Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Sir Galahad and the Pale Nun', plate IX from Idylls of the King, albumen print 1874

3. Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Sir Galahad and the Pale Nun'

O thou my love, whose love is one with mine.
I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.
(Idylls of the King, Book VIII - l. 10-11)

Thinking Points:

'whose love is one with mine': How does Cameron express 'at one' in the photograph?

'I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt': This is a particularly visual image in the poem, and as such is easily depicted in the photograph.  Do you think that enough emphasis is placed on the action of 'binding' the belt?

The costumes are again striking: do you think they help capture the moment in Tennyson?

Further Thinking

Cameron's photographs have received a lot of criticism over the years - do you think you could do better? You could try planning and even taking photographs to represent excerpts from the Tennyson's Idylls of the King like the ones below. Make sure that you use the language in the poem to inspire form and content in the photographs. How, for example, in a photograph, would you convey that Galahad is sitting in Merlin's chair?

1.         Then on a summer night it came to pass,
While the great banquet lay along the hall,
That Galahad would sit down in Merlin's chair.

'The Holy Grail' (l. 179-181)

2.         So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes

'The Passing of Arthur' (l. 167-168)

3. She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck
Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes
Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's
On her new lord, her own, the first of men.

'Merlin and Vivien' (l. 612-615)

4. That night came Arthur home, and while he climbed,
All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom,
The stairway to the hall, and looked and saw
The great Queen's bower was dark,--about his feet
A voice clung sobbing till he questioned it,
'What art thou?' and the voice about his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, 'I am thy fool,
And I shall never make thee smile again.'

'The Last Tournament' (l. 753-760)

If you come up with any photographs you are pleased with, send them to us in the form of a .jpeg, and we may well add them to the site.

In this essay undergraduate Judith Jacob writes about the problems with the moral outlook of Tennyson's Arthurian poems The Idylls. At times they seem too clear in judging good and evil, and too committed to portraying Arthur as virtuous. Elsewhere, though, they offer interesting doubts and ambiguities.

Introduction

Let's take a look at the ways in which Tennyson uses Arthurian romance in his poetry. One of the best places to begin is with his long poem series, The Idylls. Though Tennyson draws on several sources, including the poetry of Edmund Spenser, the sixteenth century Poet Laureate and author of The Faerie Queene, as well as the Mabinogion, a collection of eleven prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts, his main source for The Idylls is Thomas Malory's , and on the whole he keeps the backbone of Malory's narrative, embellishing and reshaping the text as he goes along.

There is some truth in the generalisation that the Victorian age was an age beset by doubt and uncertainty. Other essays in this section discuss how this relates to rapid scientific advances, modes of thought such as rationalism, and the increasingly changeable landscape of modern life (see for example Claire Wilkinson's essay on 'Tennyson and Science'). In this world of rapid change and uncertainty, it was not at all uncommon for Victorian poets to look to the past, whether through history or mythology, as an ideal and secure moral landscape. At its weakest, the recreation of visions of the past in poetry seems nothing more than escapism, but at its best it is a vehicle through which poets like Tennyson were able to explore and come to terms with issues of their own day more fully and more objectively.

Tennyson's Idylls are often criticised as being overtly moralising and poetically weak. The nineteenth century English writer and theologian Richard Holt Hutton describes Tennyson's writing somewhat aptly when he writes . The main characters in The Idylls sometimes lack credibility, appearing within his poetry as stereotypes or simple embodiments of good and evil. This is most apparent in Tennyson's idealised characterisation of King Arthur, which we will return to later. However, there are many powerful and interesting facets within Tennyson's interpretation of Arthurian romance, so although we will have a brief look at the weak points and problems within The Idylls, we will be focusing on the parts that are most successful.

Arthur: Good Versus Evil

At the beginning of The Idylls, in 'The Coming of Arthur', the first thing we notice is the explicit and perhaps somewhat simplistic struggle between good and evil. Arthur and his knights are described as those 'that fight for our fair father Christ' (line 509) and the poem moves between war song and calm iambic pentameter. It finally comes to a close with a recapitulation of the following lines:

And through the puissance of his Table Round,
Drew all their petty princedoms under him.
Their king and head, and made a realm, and reigned. (lines 17-9)

The passage ends on an oddly peaceful cadence, the repetition of the early lines reflecting the sense of secure enclosure created by the king's creation and protection of the kingdom.

And Arthur and his knighthood for a space
Were all one will, and through that strength the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under him,
Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned. (lines 514-8)

The wars themselves are quickly passed over and resolved into the perfection of Arthur's reign. Tennyson appears to explicitly avoid the messiness of Arthur's conception, an event which Malory clearly describes as the outcome of murder, deceit and rape:

So after the deth of the duke, kynge Uther lay with Igrayne more than thre houres after his deth, and begat on her that nyghte Arthur... But whan the lady herd telle of the duke her husband, and by all record he was dede or ever kynge Uther came to her, thenne she merveilled who that myghte be that laye with her in lykenes of her lord. So she mourned pryvely and held hir pees. (These lines are quoted from the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte Darthur, ed. Stephen H. A. Shepherd, 2004.)

(This gives an idea of what Malory's text looks like. Although the spelling might seem offputting, modern readers can quickly get used to it. This passage in a modern version would be: 'So after the death of the duke, King Uther lay with Igrayne more than three hours (i.e., for more than three hours) after his death, and begat on her (i.e., conceived) that night Arthur... But when the lady heard tell of the Duke her husband, and by all record (i.e., that all reports agreed) he was dead or ever King Uther came to her (i.e., before King Uther ever came to her), then she marvelled who that might be that lay with her in likeness of her lord. So she mourned privily (i.e. privately) and held her peace.')

A strong point of Tennyson's poem, however, is that it attends to multiple theories of Arthur's birth. Some call him 'baseborn' (line 179), while others say he is either the son of his mother's first husband Gorlois or of his foster-father Anton, rather than a son of Uther Pendragon, the mightiest of English kings. However, Tennyson's best addition to the story is his suggestion of a supernatural interpretation of Arthur's birth, which he describes dramatically: 'And down the wave and in the flame was borne / A naked babe' (lines 382-3). Thus the godly King is both borne by and born from the elements, in a supernatural act that brings unity to the kingdom.

Although the character of Arthur begins well (albeit without the difficult morality created through the doubt and confusion surrounding Arthur's conception in Malory's narrative), the character that becomes less and less realistic as The Idylls progress. He is at his least realistic in 'Guinevere' whereas Richard Hutton Holt puts it, . Tennyson pushes the sinless saviour version of Arthur forward to such a degree that he is in no way realistic or human. Arthur expresses his regret over the loss of the golden days, a time when he made his knights swear

To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honour his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purist chastity. (lines 465-71)

It might be argued that Tennyson, in attempting to pander to contemporary ideals and morals, diverges from Malory's more human characters and upholds a vision of purity and chastity so icily good that it becomes unbearable.

This fits with the moral outlook of many Victorians, so it is not hard to understand why Tennyson omits and simplifies parts of the Malory version, such as the incestuous union of Arthur and Lot's wife of Orkeney that leads to the birth of Mordred:

Wherefore the kynge caste grete love unto hir and desired to ly by her. And so they were agreed, and he begate uppon hir Sir Mordred. And she was syster on the modirs side, Igrayne, unto Arthure. (From the Norton edition of Malory, p. 30.)

('Wherefore the king cast great love unto her and desired to lie by her. And so they were agreed, and he begat upon her (i.e., they conceived) Sir Mordred. And she was sister on the mother's side, Igrayne, unto Arthur (i.e. they shared the same mother, Igrayne).')

However, the pure chastity of Tennyson's reinvented characters is hard to identify with, and as readers we find ourselves repeatedly drawn towards the human element in the form of sinning and fallen characters such as Guinevere and Lancelot.

Guinevere and 'Doubleness'

In The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry the critic Joseph Bristow explains the idea of 'doubleness' in the book Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics by the British academic Isobel Armstrong. He writes that she sees 'doubleness' as 'the defining characteristic of Victorian poetry, where a single poem may be thought almost always to contain two different and contradictory poems' (p. 32). Thus, on the one hand we can read the poem as a celebration of Arthur's goodness and an indictment of the frailty of women, but it is simultaneously very easy to sympathise with Guinevere and agree with her opinion of Arthur as emotionally inferior to Lancelot, for example when Tennyson beautifully writes:

Her journey done, [she] glanced at him, thought him cold,
High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him,
'Not like my Lancelot'. ('Guinevere' lines 402-4)

In 'Guinevere' Arthur's speech and judgement of his wife feel artificial and prove difficult to read. When he tells her 'And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I, / Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God / Forgives...' (lines 540-2) it is hard to accept Arthur as a godlike figure, and his golden words can be seen to double up as arrogance. It is even harder to accept Tennyson's gloss on the Arthur that Malory describes as having several relationships as well as one incestuous liaison, when he says to his wife in 'Guinevere', 'For I was ever virgin save for thee' (line 554). Through the overt characterisation of Arthur as a redeeming Christ-like patriarch and Lancelot as a damned sinner, Lancelot emerges as the hero who claims all the reader's sympathy. We cannot react with anything other than pity and approval when Lancelot and the Queen 'rode to the divided way, / There kissed, and parted weeping: for he past, / Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen' (lines 123-5).

'Merlin and Vivien'

The Idylls aren't all as overtly moralising as 'Guinevere', however, and Tennyson is at his best when he closely engages with complex issues, for example gender, power and rhetoric, which he explores in poems such as 'Merlin and Vivien'. 'Merlin and Vivien' is based on a very short paragraph in Malory's Le Morte D'arthur which describes Merlin's infatuation with, and failure to seduce, the lake damsel Nimue. The passage ends with Merlin's imprisonment at the hands of the maiden. Tennyson skilfully adapts this short passage into the long poem which is arguably one of the finest in The Idylls. The briefly sketched Nimue becomes the finely delineated Vivien, and the simple game of failed male seduction becomes an infinitely complex power struggle between two equally menacing characters. In the poem the melancholy Merlin sees 'the high purpose broken by the worm' (line 194). This suggests that wherever there is truth and goodness, there is simultaneously hidden corruption which creeps, wormlike, into even the highest point of human virtue.

The idea of good and evil in Tennyson refuses to resolve simply into Victorian dichotomies: good and evil cannot easily be unpacked and unloaded onto separate characters. With Merlin and Vivien it is impossible to locate either character as either vice or virtue. Instead, the winding persuasions and seductions serve to show that good and evil are inextricably intertwined. This is illustrated perfectly when Tennyson describes both Vivien's beauty and her evil intent when she speaks to Merlin:

'Great Master, do ye love me?' he was mute.
And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat,
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake... (lines 235-40)

This kind of idea reappears at different moments in The Idylls, for example in Lancelot's speech in 'The Holy Grail' when he says:

. . . in me lived a sin
So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure,
Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung
Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower
And poisonous grew together, each as each. (lines 769-73).

Instead of looking to the past for an idealised landscape of simple oppositions such as good/evil, Christian/heathen, male/female, Tennyson uses Arthurian romance as a means to explore the overarching complexity of human morality.

A Doubtful Ending

Finally, rather than ending The Idylls with an easy refutation of contemporary religious doubt and a confirmation of the truth of Christianity, Tennyson allows his poem to close with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. Although Arthur kills Mordred, he is left 'all but slain himself' (line 169), while Lancelot disappears entirely from the narrative. There are no longer any good or evil leaders left to guide the people. At the very end of 'The Passing of Arthur' Tennyson describes Arthur's last moments in Camelot: a scene emerges not unlike the biblical as Bedivere betrays Arthur twice before carrying out his demand. Though the passage is full of biblical resonances nothing is simplified.

There is no obvious answer to Arthur's role as saviour or guardian; perhaps Arthur here becomes a Christ-like saviour who must be sacrificed before he can 'come again / To rule once more' (lines 191-2). If so, the confusion and obscurity in this poem is partly Tennyson's recognition of Victorian uncertainty and doubt. However, he harnesses this doubt to reaffirm faith and morality by using it as in indication of something larger than we can see. Tennyson draws together Christianity with other mythologies and ends the myth in the way he begins it, with the elements. Born of water and fire, Arthur boards a boat and 'Somewhere far off, [he is seen to] pass on and on, and go / From less to less and vanish into light' (lines 467-8). Though there is no certainty, the poems present a reassuring circularity. This is comforting because it suggests renewal and hope.

Though Tennyson's words and the age of the knights errant both come to an end in The Idylls, we are left with a promise of new beginnings, new eras and hope that overcomes religious doubt. Tennyson crafts a beautiful sense of melancholy which is encapsulated perfectly by Bedivere when he says '... the days darken round me, and the years, / Among new men, strange faces, other minds' (lines 405-6). Through the medium of medieval literature Tennyson skilfully addresses the doubt and insecurity which is often described as typical of the Victorian age. He challenges, reassures, and simultaneously reaffirms the impossibility of knowing 'even as also I am known'. Though we cannot know in full, we are shown that we can do and know in part. The poem ends with a celebration of human , and it promises new life and new prospects, by finishing with a beautiful new beginning: 'And the new sun rose bringing the new year' (line 469).

Further Thinking

Do you think King Arthur is, or could be, such an important story for us today as it was for Tennyson? How might it be used to address the big problems of today?

Do you agree that when Tennyson's characters (or characters in general) are too good they become less engaging?