In Memoriam

 

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

 I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1850. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, aged 22. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest poems of the 19th century.

The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and emotions as he grieves over the death of a close friend. He views the cruelty of nature and mortality in light of materialist science and faith. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.

Publication history

The poem was written by Tennyson over a period of 17 years (1833-1850). It was first published anonymously and was titled 'IN MEMORIAM A. H. H., where A. H. H. is an abbreviation for Tennyson's late friend Arthur Henry Hallam and Roman numbers refers to 1833, the year of Hallam's death.

The poem consists of 2,916 lines. The poem begins with a prologue followed by 131 sections with Roman numerals as a heading. The poem ends with an epilogue. Thus, the total number of sections is 133.

Section  'O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me' was added in the fourth edition published in 1851. 'Old warder of these buried bones' was added in 1871. The epilogue is a marriage song on the wedding of Tennyson's sister Cecilia and Edmund Law Lushington.

^Form

The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. The earliest material is thought to be that which begins "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore / Saileth the placid ocean-plains" and imagines the return of Hallam's body from Italy. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.

"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect that often divides readers – while some consider it to be the natural sound of mourning and grief, others consider it monotonous. The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.

The poem was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who after the death of Prince Albert wrote that she was "soothed & pleased" by it. In 1862 Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem, and when she met him again in 1883 she told him what a comfort it had been.

Jude the Obscure

 

Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality, and marriage.

Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets who viewed him as a mentor. After his death, his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and Philip Larkin.

Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in the southwest and south-central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England. He yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modeled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax, and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies.

After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former school teacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually is persuaded to marry, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. She soon regrets this, because, in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes is her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact that Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.

Photochrom of the High Street, Oxford, 1890–1900

Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humor.

Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the sources of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and kills himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too many." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.

Besides herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against. She comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing her husband sex. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.

After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambitions both in love and in achieving fame in scholarship. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead of setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.

The events of Jude the Obscure occur over a 19-year period, but no dates are specified in the novel. Aged 11 at the beginning of the novel, by the time of his death Jude seems much older than his thirty years – for he has experienced so much disappointment and grief in his life. It would seem that his burdens exceeded his ability to survive, much less to triumph.

The character of Sue Bridehead

The novel’s other protagonist and Jude’s cousin. Sue’s parents were divorced and she was raised in London and Christminster. She is an extremely intelligent woman who rejects Christianity and flirts with paganism, despite working as a religious artist and then a teacher. Sue is often described as “ethereal” and “bodiless” and she generally lacks sexual passion, especially compared to Jude. Sue marries Phillotson as a kind of rebuke to Jude for his own marriage to Arabella and is then repulsed by Phillotson as a husband. She is portrayed as inconsistent and emotional, often changing her mind abruptly, but she develops a strong relationship and love with Jude. Though she starts out nonreligious, the death of her children drives Sue to a harsh, legalistic version of Christianity as she believes she is being punished for her earlier rebellion against Christianity, and she returns to Phillotson even though she never ceases to love Jude.

Thinking Activity: Importance of Being Earnest

 The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

 is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humor and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most enduringly popular play.

The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Their feud came to a climax in court when Wilde sued for libel. The proceedings provided enough evidence for his arrest, trial, and conviction on charges of gross indecency. Wilde's homosexuality was revealed to the Victorian public and he was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labor. Despite the play's early success, Wilde's notoriety caused the play to be closed after 86 performances. After his release from prison, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no more comic or dramatic works.

The Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Dame Edith Evans reprised her celebrated interpretation of Lady Bracknell; The Importance of Being Earnest (1992) by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast, and Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) incorporated some of Wilde's original material cut during the preparation of the first stage production.

Queer scholars have argued that the play's themes of duplicity and ambivalence are inextricably bound up with Wilde's homosexuality and that the play exhibits a "flickering presence-absence of homosexual desire". On re-reading the play after his release from prison, Wilde said: "It was extraordinary reading the play over. How I used to toy with that Tiger Life.

It has been said that the use of the name Earnest may have been a homosexual in-joke. In 1892, three years before Wilde wrote the play, John Gambril Nicholson had published the book of pederastic poetry Love in Earnest. The sonnet Of Boys' Names included the verse: "Though Frank may ring like a silver bell And Cecil softer music claim They cannot work the miracle 'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame."The word "earnest" may also have been a code word for homosexual, as in: "Is he earnest?", in the same way, that "Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were employed.^[Sir Donald Sinden, an actor who had met two of the play's original cast, and Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote to The Times to dispute suggestions that "Earnest" held any sexual connotations:

Although they had ample opportunity, at no time did any of them even hint that "Earnest" was a synonym for homosexual, or that "bunburying" may have implied homosexual sex. The first time I heard it mentioned was in the 1980s and I immediately consulted Sir John Gielgud whose own performance of Jack Worthing in the same play was legendary and whose knowledge of theatrical lore was encyclopaedic. He replied in his ringing tones: "No-No! Nonsense, absolute nonsense: I would have known".

A number of theories have also been put forward to explain the derivation of Bunbury, and Bunburying, which is used in the play to imply a secretive double life. It may have derived from Henry Shirley Bunbury, a hypochondriacal acquaintance of Wilde's youth. Another suggestion, put forward in 1913 by Aleister Crowley, who knew Wilde, was that Bunbury was a combination word: that Wilde had once taken a train to Banbury, met a schoolboy there and arranged a second secret meeting with him at Sunbury.

Thinking Activity: Hard Times for TheseTimes

What is utilitarianism?

utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it. Utilitarianism is a species of consequentialism, the general doctrine in ethics that actions (or types of action) should be evaluated on the basis of their consequences. Utilitarianism and other consequentialist theories are in opposition to egoism, the view that each person should pursue his or her own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that regards some actions (or types of action) as right or wrong independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of action dependent upon the motive of the agent—for, according to the utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive. Utilitarians may, however, distinguish the aptness of praising or blaming an agent from whether the action was right.

 In the novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens connives a theme of utilitarianism, along with education and industrialization. Utilitarianism is the belief that something is morally right if it helps a majority of people. It is a principle involving nothing but facts and leaves no room for creativity or imagination. Dickens provides symbolic examples of this utilitarianism in Hard Times by using Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, who has a hard belief in utilitarianism. Thomas Gradgrind is so into his philosophy of rationality and facts that he has forced this belief into his children’s and as well as his young students. Mr. Josiah Bounderby, Thomas Gradgrind’s best friend, also studies utilitarianism, but he was more interested in power and money than in facts. Dickens uses Cecelia Jupe, daughter of a circus clown, who is the complete opposite of Thomas Gradgrind to provide a great contrast of a utilitarian belief.

Dickens uses Thomas Gradgrind to demonstrate exactly how a basic philosophy of rationality is self-interest. Thomas Gradgrind has faith that human nature can be restrained, calculated, and ruled completely by facts. Certainly, his schooling attempts to turn young children into tiny machines. Dickens’s main goal in Hard Times was to exemplify the risks of letting humans become nothing but machines, signifying that the lack of kindness and imagination in life would be intolerable. Louisa balms her father for only teaching her lessons on facts and nothing on life, she feels that that’s the reason she is unhappy in her marriage. “All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me.

Thinking Activity : Pamela

 Samuel Richardson was a major English 18th-century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753).

Richardson had been an established printer and publisher for most of his life when, at the age of 51, he wrote his first novel and immediately became one of the most popular and admired writers of his time.

Pamela Virtue Rewarded

Mackworth, near Derby, Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), English novelist who expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel by his invention and use of the letterform (“epistolary novel”). His major novels were Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48)

Richardson was 50 years old when he wrote Pamela, but of his first 50 years little is known. His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became London tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682. A temporary move of the Richardsons to Derbyshire accounts for the fact that the novelist was born in Mackworth. They returned to London when Richardson was 10. He had at best what he called “only Common School-Learning.” The perceived inadequacy of his education was later to preoccupy him and some of his critics.

Richardson was bound apprentice to a London printer, John Wilde. Sometime after completing his apprenticeship he became associated with the Leakes, a printing family whose presses he eventually took over when he set up in business for himself in 1721 and married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his master. Elizabeth Leake, the sister of a prosperous bookseller of Bath, became his second wife in 1733, two years after Martha’s death. His domestic life was marked by tragedy. All six of the children from his first marriage died in infancy or childhood. By his second wife he had four daughters who survived him, but two other children died in infancy. These and other bereavements contributed to the nervous ailments of his later life.

In his professional life Richardson was hardworking and successful. With the growth in prominence of his press went his steady increase in prestige as a member, an officer, and later master, of the Stationers’ Company (the guild for those in the book trade). During the 1730s his press became known as one of the three best in London, and with prosperity he moved to a more spacious London house and leased the first of three country houses in which he entertained a circle of friends that included Dr. Johnson, the painter William Hogarth, the actors Colley Cibber and David Garrick, Edward Young, and Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, whose influence in 1733 helped to secure for Richardson lucrative contracts for government printing that later included the journals of the House.

In this same decade he began writing in a modest way. At some point, he was commissioned to write a collection of letters that might serve as models for “country readers,” a volume that has become known as Familiar Letters on Important Occasions. Occasionally he hit upon continuing the same subject from one letter to another, and, after a letter from “a father to a daughter in service, on hearing of her master’s attempting her virtue,” he supplied the daughter’s answer. This was the germ of his novel Pamela. With a method supplied by the letter writer and a plot by a story that he remembered of an actual serving maid who preserved her virtue and was, ostensibly, rewarded by marriage, he began writing the work in November 1739 and published it as Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded a year later.

History

 Paper no. 05

History of English Literature from 1350 to 1900

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MKBU

Vachchhalata Joshi                      

Roll no. 21

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

Shakespeare’s contemporaries and successors in the Drama

      Among the contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare, the most important are Ben Jonson, Chapman, John Marston, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, Tourneur, Philip Massinger, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher and Ford. There has been a distinct note of decadence with these dramatists particularly in the field of tragedy. In Shakespearean tragedies, there is enough horror and melodrama, but these tragedies are not mere melodramas. The evil that is shown in the tragedies is ultimately resolved, the disintegrated tragic universe is restored to equilibrium at the end and a note of reaffirmation of values is struck at the end. But with the post-Shakespearan dramatists, this note of resolution of evil is absent. They create a world of unrelieved gloom and evil. They deal with the themes of incest and sexual immorality. There is the element of the morbid and the macabre in these plays.

                         

John Webster (1580-1623)

is a very able and clever dramatist. He is almost equal in power with Shakespeare in the matter of creating profound and intens tragic emotions. He is regarded as one of the most inspired playwrights of this period, although his tragedies all lack force and concentration of purpose. After an early career of work in collaboration with others, he is engaged as an independent playwright in Appius and Virginia, The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, A Cure for a Cuckold, The Devil's Lawcase. Of these, The White Devil and The Lawcase of Malfi are the most famous tragedies on which his fame rests. The chief figure of The White Devil is the notorious Vittoria whose deeds and death occurred during Webster's lifetime. Having urged her lover, Brachiano to murder her husband Cammillo and his own Duchess Isabella. Vittoria marries him and both eventuaty fall victims to the vengeance of Isabella's brother. Great power distinguish scene in which Vittoria stands her trial.

      But The Diuchess of Malfi (1512-1514) is a greater play. The persecution of the Duchess by her brothers for having married the man of her heart, her murder at their order by the imaginative villain, Bosola and his remorse and atonement are described with intense tragic feeling and the subtlest psychological sense. Webster's sinister's imagination displays itself not only in the main features of plot and character, but in the unearthly images and haunting lines of poetry with which the two great tragedies abound. He shows skill in characterisation. Physical horrors are made to reveal the spiritual anguish of the heroines and are thus made an integral part of the drama. In his revenge tragedies, sympathy is drawn in favour of the victims. The revengers are villains. Webster's poetry is impressive it has a wishful and tender charm: Cover her face, Mine eyes dazle - she died young. There is a pervasive atmosphere of gloom and corruption, but at the end of the plays, moral order is asserted. It is a fact that Webster's tragedies turn on revenge, that there is crude horror and melodrama. But it cannot be denied that he is one of the few dramatists of the time who has an insight into human being and who was able to delineate individuals and not merely to sketch rude types.

      John Marston's (1576-1634)

Antonio and Mallida (1600) and Antonio's Revenge are lurid essays in the tragedy of blood and thunder. In the Malcontent (1604) the bitter quality of his early verse satires reappears in the utterances of the honest Malevole who is the hero of the play. The Dutch Courtezan is a well-made comedy notable for the rollicking Cockledemoy, one of the most amusing characters in Elizabethan drama. Marston is a baffled and a baffling genius, constantly promising some great triumph in the sinister. He descends at times to extravagance, sheer nonsense and coarse speech. The dates of his plays are not definitely known. But the variety and originality of his works are evident. The Malcontent if it preceded Hamlet set the fashion of castigating society in lyrical irony. Rupert Brooke says of Marston: "He loved dirt for the sake of truth, also for its own. Filth, horror and wit were his legacy.

                                                                           

      Thomas Dekker (1570-1632)

was a prolific writer in various kinds and one of the most unfortunate among Elizabethan writers. His genial nature and his sympathy with popular types are evident in The Shoemaker's Holiday which is perhaps the earliest drama representing his unaided work. This drama combines a charming love story with the humours and intrigues of contemporary English life. Symon Eyre, the master shoe-maker is a delightfully drawn figure and the play despite its elements of pathos breathe the serene atmosphere of work and contentment. In the Houest Whore, Dekker once more displays his gift of pathos. In the plays of Dekker, passionate idealism constantly transfigured the most sordid scenes and subjects, and this idealism is abundantly clear in the Honest Whore which in its culminating phase shows the reclaiming of the courtesan Bellafront. Her father who seeks her out and leads her back to virtue is greatly drawn. Dekker was chiefly a collaborator. He collaborated with Webster in Sir Thomas Wyatt, with Middleton in Roaring Girl, and with Ford in The Witch of Edmonton.

 

 Thomas Heywood (1575-1641)

 has been called by Lamb "the Prose-Shakespeare." It is supposed that he had a hand in no less than two hundred and twenty plays of which over thirty survives. His masterpiece, A Woman Killed With Kindness is the greatest surviving example of English domestic tragi-comedy. It deals with the seduction of a woman by the friend of her husband who discovers the wrong and forbears to punish his wife. Her remorse brings her to death, but before the end she begs and received her husband's forgiveness. In The English Traveller, a hardly less delicate subject is handled with almost equal success. Lacking Webster's intense imaginative power and Dekker's gift of poetry, Heywood displays in these two plays the rare power of being able to deal with fine emotional issues without ever falling into the slough of sentimentalism.

 

 Phillip Massinger (1583-1640)

is a serious and skilful playwright. His best comedies are: A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam, The Maid of Honour, etc. His tragedies: The Roman Actor, The Diuke of Milan, The Fatal Dowry are characterised by excessive romanticism and over-contrived plot. His style and verse are strong and solid. If not inspired, he is a conscientious writer of scenes which are often noble.

 

      Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626)

 wrote two tragedies of blood and thunder, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy. They are crude and melodramatic. The first book recalls Hamlet in that the hero has a mission to punish the guilty. No other play of the time has a more intense dramatic effect and so clear and rapid a style.

 

 Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)

 wrote comedies distinguished by their liveliness, and dexterity: Michaelmas Terme, A Chast Mayd in Cheap-side. In his tragedy, he showed unexpected force. He produced Woman Beware Woman which deals with the scandalous crimes of the Italian courtesan Binaca Capello. His other tragedies or romantic comedies were written in collaboration with William Rowley.

 

      Beaumont and Fletcher were friends who chiefly wrote together. Their comedies include The Scornful Ladie, The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Their tragedies are The Maides Tragedy and A King and No King. All these plays reveal a surprising knowledge of stage-craft. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a blend of many elements and is the gayest of comedies. It is however his tragi-comedy like Philaster and The Maides Tragedy which have profoundly influenced Shakespeare's last plays. Impossible romance, artificiality, and stereotyped characterisation mark these plays. His heroes conform to a single type, namely the cavalier gallant idealised. Extravagant sentiment and pathos pervade these plays.

 

      To the decadence of post-Shakespearean drama belong also John Ford. His fame depends on his three tragedies: Love's Sacrifice, It is pity, She is a Whore, and The Broken Heart and on his interesting and thoroughly well-made history play Warbeck. The first of these plays exhibits passion, foiled of its actual consummation. The second develops sympathetically a theme of passion which is very poetica In "The Broken Heart" passion is again dominant over all else in life and death. It takes very effective form in the scene where Calantha, dancing on the eve of her marriage is told successively of the deaths of her father, Penthea and her betrothed, yet dances on to the end when she plots her own doom. Ford's sensationalism, his love of forbidden themes and his moral antinomianism are commonly cited to his disadvantage; but they seem inseparable from the less dubious qualities ot nis genius-the intensity of imagination, the poignant sense of tragic fate, the audience intuition of character which to all who have felt the meaning of life or literature give him a place very little below the highest.

 

English tragedy after Shakespeare declined. The court of James I was extravagant and immoral. There was a sense of cynicism and criticism among the writers of the age. The dramatists were pre-occupied with themes of decay, incest and despair. Sensationalism, morbidity and immorality pervade the plays. There was no redeeming feature by way of suggesting the resolution of evil that we find in Shakespeare's plays.

      In comedy, there was a tendency towards realism and humour. The sunny bright comedies of Shakespeare were replaced by realistic comedies. Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday combines a charming love story with the humours and intrigues of contemporary English life. Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a blend of many elements - it is the gayest of comedies. Comedies like A New way to pay old debts, The City Madam by Philips Massinger, and Thomas Middleton's The Chaste Maid in Cheapside are remarkable for hilarious comedy and realism. In short, comedy became realistic and more true to life and more vivid as social pictures.

 

Tennyson : In Memoriam

 Paper no. 04

Literature of Victorian Age

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MKBU

  

Vachchhalata Joshi

Roll no.21

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

 

Topic: Alfred Tennyson

Critical Analysis of In Memoriam

In Memoriam Genre and Style

 

Life of Tennyson

 Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem. His father, the Reverend George Tennyson, tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. In the 1820s, however, Tennyson's father began to suffer frequent mental breakdowns that were exacerbated by alcoholism. One of Tennyson's brothers had violent quarrels with his father, a second was later confined to an insane asylum, and another became an opium addict.

 

Tennyson escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. Although the poems in the book were mostly juvenilia, they attracted the attention of the "Apostles," an undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Hallam. The "Apostles" provided Tennyson, who was tremendously shy, with much needed friendship and confidence as a poet. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends; they toured Europe together in 1830 and again in 1832. Hallam's sudden death in 1833 greatly affected the young poet. The long elegy In Memoriam and many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to Hallam.

 

In 1830, Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and in 1832 he published a second volume entitled simply Poems. Some reviewers condemned these books as "affected" and "obscure." Tennyson, stung by the reviews, would not publish another book for nine years. In 1836, he became engaged to Emily Sellwood. When he lost his inheritance on a bad investment in 1840, Sellwood's family called off the engagement. In 1842, however, Tennyson's Poems in two volumes was a tremendous critical and popular success. In 1850, with the publication of In Memoriam, Tennyson became one of Britain's most popular poets. He was selected Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth. In that same year, he married Emily Sellwood. They had two sons, Hallam and Lionel.

 

At the age of 41, Tennyson had established himself as the most popular poet of the Victorian era. The money from his poetry (at times exceeding 10,000 pounds per year) allowed him to purchase a house in the country and to write in relative seclusion. His appearance—a large and bearded man, he regularly wore a cloak and a broad brimmed hat—enhanced his notoriety. He read his poetry with a booming voice, often compared to that of Dylan Thomas. In 1859, Tennyson published the first poems of Idylls of the Kings, which sold more than 10,000 copies in one month. In 1884, he accepted a peerage, becoming Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson died on October 6, 1892, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

Genre and style of In memoriam

uestions of genre matter about In Memoriam because we tend to read according to certain definite genre rules, taking, for instance, something we recognize as satire very differently from something we categorize as a love poem, a tragedy, or an epic. Tennyson's great experimental poem reconceives the traditional elegy, which it blends with other genres, including ordinary lyric, epic, dream vision, landscape meditations, dramatic monologues, and so on. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines elegy, which comes from the Greek elegeia, "lament," as a "lyric, usually formal in tone and diction, suggested either by the death of an actual person or by the poet's contemplation of the tragic aspects of life. In either case, the emotion, originally expressed as a lament, finds consolation in the contemplation of some permanent principle."

 

Many of the most famous elegies in English, including Milton's "Lycidas" (1637), Shelley's "Adonais" (1821), and Arnold's "Thyrsis" (1867) participate in the tradition of the pastoral idyll or ecologue, which dates back to Greek Moschus's "Lament for Bion" and the first idyll of Theocritus by way of Vergil's enormously influential Ecologues. This genre, whose action unfolds in an idealized country setting populated by shepherds and shepherdesses, employs particularly elevated formal diction and follows a ritualized progression. Pastoral elegy contains, for example, an announcement of a death, a mourning procession by denizens of the woodland, who may include shepherdesses and nymphs, a complaint to nature, until a final ritualistic resolution occurs. By alluding to pastoral elegies, In Memoriam in some sense aligns itself with this genre at the same time that its very different form and method challenges it.

 

One sign of Tennyson's combination of radically untraditional and traditional appears in the style — or rather styles — of In Memoriam, for unlike its predecessors, this poem varies from section to section as it embodies or alludes to a range of genres. Consequently, some of the sections employ plain style with simple, everyday diction, whereas others, which draw upon Spenser and Keats, emphasize lush, sensuous language. Similarly, the poem also manipulates its simple stanzaic form (abba) with astonishing virtuosity, sections sometimes consisting of only one or two long sentences whereas other sections use very short sentences. Some sections adapt the style and diction of sonnets, others resemble pastorals, yet others take the form of dialogues, and so on.

 

Throughout, Tennyson weaves his extremely varied styles and allusions to various genres together with chains of images and motifs, which in Tennysonian manner combine the simple and the complex: in isolation, most images, like most of the sections in which they appear, seem fairly simple and straightforward, but their participation in a network of repeated and often contrasted images makes almost every one of them resonate with additional meaning and complexity.

Critical Analysis of In Memoriam

‘In Memoriam’ is often considered Tennyson’s greatest poetic achievement. It is a stunning and profoundly moving long poem consisting of a prologue, 131 cantos/stanzas, and an epilogue. It was published in 1850, but Tennyson began writing the individual poems in 1833 after learning that his closest friend, the young Cambridge poet Arthur Henry Hallam, had suddenly died at age 22 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Over the course of seventeen years Tennyson worked on and revised the poems, but he did not initially intend to publish them as one long work.

When he prepared “In Memoriam” (initially planning on calling it “The Way of the Soul”) for publication, Tennyson placed the poems in an order to suit the major thematic progressions of the work; thus, the poems as published are not in the order in which they were written. Even with the reordering of the poems, there is no single unified theme. Grief, loss and renewal of faith, survival, and other themes compete with one another.

The poem partly belongs to the genre of elegy, which is a poem occasioned by the death of a person. The standard elegy includes ceremonial mourning for the deceased, extolling his virtues, and seeking consolation for his death. Other famous elegies, to which In Memoriam is often compared, include John Milton’s Lycidas, Shelley’s Adonais, and Wordsworth’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” The epilogue is also an epithalamion, or a classical wedding celebration poem. The stanzas of the poems have uneven lengths but have a very regular poetic meter. The style, which Tennyson used to such great effect that it is now called the “In Memoriam stanza,” consists of tetrameter quatrains rhymed abba. The lines are short, and the rhythm is strict, which imparts a sense of stasis as well as labor to move from one line to the next.

In terms of structure, Tennyson once remarked that the poem was organized around the three celebrations of Christmas that occur. Other scholars point to different forms of structure. According to scholars A.C. Bradley and E.D.H. Johnson, cantos 1-27 are poems of despair/ungoverned sense/subjective; cantos 28- 77 are poems of mind governing sense/despair/objective; cantos 78-102 are poems of spirit governing mind/doubt/subjective; and cantos 103-31 are spirit harmonizing sense and spirit/objective. In terms of the structure of Tennyson’s thoughts on the meaning of poetry, the scholars find a four-part division: poetry as release from emotion, poetry as release from thought, poetry as self-realization, and poetry as mission/prophecy. Canto 95 is seen, from this view, as the climax of the poem.

The most conspicuous theme in the poem is, of course, grief. The poet’s emotional progression from utter despair to hopefulness fits into the structure observed by the scholars. The early poems are incredibly personal and bleak. Tennyson feels abandoned and lost. He cannot sleep and personifies the cruelty of Sorrow, “Priestess in the vaults of Death.” He wonders if poetry is capable of expressing his loss. He wanders by his friend’s old house, sick with sadness. Memory is oppressive. Nature herself seems hostile, chaotic. His grief has a concomitant in a lack of religious faith.

However, as the poems proceed, the poet begins to grapple with his grief and find ways to move beyond it. He learns, as scholar Joseph Becker writes, to “experience deeper layers of grief so that he may transcend the limitations of time and space that Hallam’s death represents.” He has learned to love better and embrace his sorrow, which he now personifies as a wife, not a mistress. He learns that Hallam, while once his flesh-and-blood friend whom he misses dearly, is now a transcendent spiritual being, something the human race can aspire to become. Although Tennyson will never fully recover from the loss of Hallam, he can move forward; the wedding of his other sister establishes this result for him.

One of the reasons why the poem is so lauded by critics is its engagement with some contemporary Victorian religious and scientific debates and discourses. Tennyson is dealing not only with his sorrow over Hallam’s death, but also with the lack of religious faith that came with it. He wonders what the point of life is if man’s individual soul is not immortal after death. His emotions vacillate between doubt and faith. He eventually comes to terms with the fact that Hallam may be gone in bodily form, but that he is a perfect spiritual being whose consciousness endures past his death. Becker writes that Tennyson experiences “renewed faith … that both individual and human survival are predicated on spiritual rather than physical terms.”

Also, significantly, he ruminates over the new scientific findings of the age, which are forerunners of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In particular, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) undermined the biblical story of creation. Several of the cantos deal with the ideas of the randomness and brutality of Nature towards man. Canto LVI has the poet anguishing, “So careful of the type? But no. / From scarped cliff and quarried stone / She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone: / I care for nothing, all shall go.’” One of the most famous lines in the English language, “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” is also in this canto.

Tennyson grapples with what all of this means in terms of his religious faith as well as in the context of his loss; death is very, very long. The critic William Flesch observes, “Tennyson feels the utter oppressiveness of the emptiness and vacuity of time that Lyell has so devastatingly demonstrated. Within that, he feels the pain of his mourning for Hallam, a pain that may be sometimes intermittent but is always at the core of his being.” Ultimately, though, the fact that love prevails and persists in the vastness of Nature gives Tennyson the hope he needs to place his faith in transcendence and salvation once more. The poet never rejected the actual findings of Lyell and others, but he certainly saw them as only partial answers to the mysteries of the universe and believed God still cared very much for human beings and that there was hope for such humans to attain a higher state.