By Aidan Day
Tennyson isn't recognized for his scepticism. This e-book argues that he can be. It proposes a revaluation of ways within which his paintings is learn. Tennyson has continuously been understood as a poet who's dedicated basically to endorsing non secular values. yet this learn argues that a lot of his poetry is pushed by means of a metaphysical scepticism that's linked, partly, with rational views deriving from Enlightenment notion. The scepticism in Tennyson's poetry partakes within the complicated iteration of the trendy that was once occurring in his period. one of many reasons of the research is to illustrate cultural reviews method of Tennyson trivialises his highbrow subtlety and complexity. Making wide serious use of Tennyson's manuscript drafts, this learn presents shut readings of Tennyson's previous, shorter poems, including the imperative works of his adulthood together with In Memoriam , Maud and The Lover's story , and may be a helpful source for Tennyson scholars and students world wide.
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Extra resources for Tennyson’s Scepticism
Example text
Source of creativity- in Milton's case of the higher life, and in Tennyson's of the life of art. (Stange 1960: 101) The idea that 'The Hesperides' deals with personal and inward, specifically imaginative, experience is important. But there is no reason to accept the view that the ethical, metaphysical and religious range of significance in Milton's use of the Hesperidean Garden is lacking in Tennyson. Tennyson may very well have included this epigraph from Comus exactly because he wanted to draw attention to the larger implications of his presentation of the Garden.
The manuscript variants of the work are legion. It is an important poem, central to the issue of Tennyson's early engagement with metaphysical issues. The poem takes the classical legend of the Judgement of Paris as its subject. This story relates how all the gods, except Eris, goddess of Strife or Discord, were once invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Angry at her exclusion, Eris cast a golden apple, inscribed with the words 'For the most fair', amongst the guests. The goddesses Here, Aphrodite, and Pallas Athena each claimed the apple for herself and Zeus ordered that the Trojan shepherd Paris, actually the second son of the King of Troy, should decide the dispute.
But these moral polarities are not introduced uncritically into 'CEnone'. To approach the critical spirit in which they are held, I want first to refer to one of Tennyson's most important classical sources for 'CEnone', the Heroides of Ovid. In the sixteenth epistle of the Heroides Paris declares to Helen the unquenchable fire of his love. He invokes the dream of his mother Hecuba in order to stress the inevitability of this love: I am in love ... Thus have the fates decreed ... Listen to words told faithfully and true.