LECTURE 10

FROM THE ROMANTIC PERIOD TO THE VICTORIAN AGE

 --Romantic period =preoccupation with emotion/operations of human consciousness
--Victorian age = preoccupation with moral/social condition ["The Condition of England"]
Today: Place & Problem of Victorian Poets

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892) poet laureate: 1850; knighted 1884
1114/1204 "The Lady of Shalott" (1832, 1842)
--Literary precedent, Arthurian legend.
--Camelot=real world? Shalott = ivory tower of aesthetic creation?
--Criticisms: unmanly affectation; lack of engagement with moral issues of real world.

1138/1230 In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
(A. H. H. = Arthur Henry Hallam)
--131 lyrics, plus Prologue and Epilogue
--Written over 17 years
--Every stanza identical in structure
--Addresses :
*The process of mourning
*The limits of language for this process
*Existence of God and possibility of afterlife

Lyrics:
5 [1142/1234]("words like weeds"or clothes),
7 [1143/1235] ("Dark house") + 119 [1274]
11 [1145/1238] (calm=soothing; calm=despair?)
13 [1146/1239] ("Tears of the widower...")
72 [1163/1255] + 99 [1174/1267] ("Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again ...?)

1188/1280 "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854)
--Commemorating victims of bureaucratic blunder during Crimean War.
--Is this JUST a glorification of mindless aggression?