Alfred, Lord Tennyson, etc.Maud / Crimean War / Roger Fenton

1809-1892

Arthur Henry Hallam, d. 1833

“Ulysses” (1833, 1842)Meter is iambic pentameter with spondees and (a few) trochees: U / U / U / U / U / , “rising”Adapts The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno

“The poem was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and it gives the feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life…” –TennysonNote lists, series, infinitive verbs.Dramatic monologue / Lyric form

Is Ulysses a sympathetic character?

Crimean War, 1854-56

“The Charge of the Light Brigade”

Meter: Dactylic: / U U , “falling”Story circulated by telegraph, newspaper; charge happened 25 October, 1854. Times article included phrase, “some one had blundered”Drafts of poem circulated by telegraph & penny postPublished, after being typeset and reformatted, in The Examiner newspaper, 9 December 1854I.e. it’s highly mediated.

Changes.

Notice three sets of handwriting: the main body is in Emily Tennyson’s hand, Alfred’s wife; the title, alterations and note is in Alfred Tennyson’s hand and the note to the left of the title is in his publisher’s hand. This is the second version. P60 The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854. 17.9cm. MS Single sheet folded. Copy in Emily, Lady Tennyson’s hand, with corrections and alterations in AT’s hand.

More changes.

Yet more changes.

“Charge of the Light Brigade

,”as read by Tennyson and recorded on wax

cylinder, c. 1890

Tennyson on “Maud”Maud is “the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence of a recklessly speculative age.”“I took a man constitutionally diseased and dipt him into the circumstances of the time and took him out on fire.”“I have put the cry for war into the mouth of a madman”

Tennyson on “Maud”Maud is “the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence of a recklessly speculative age.”“I took a man constitutionally diseased and dipt him into the circumstances of the time and took him out on fire.”“I have put the cry for war into the mouth of a madman”