Tennysons Poetry is defined by a desire to escape the world rather than engage with it. Do you agree? Explore in relation to Ulysses and The Lotos Eaters

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Matt Robins

‘Tennyson’s Poetry is defined by a desire to escape the world rather than engage with it’. Do you agree? Explore in relation to Ulysses and The Lotos Eaters

Ulysses and The Lotos Eaters are both poems characterized by Tennyson as a means of ‘escape’. Tennyson uses the dramatic monologue in Ulysses as a device to convey the sheer emotion felt by the protagonist for the loss of ‘adventure’ in his life. This is quite evident in his metaphor; ‘How dull it is to pause, to rust unburnish’d, to not shine in use’, which is constructed to use language that would be used to describe a sword that had fallen into disuse, a sword being a motif of war and adventure but also constructed by Tennyson as representative of Ulysses, who fears that over time he will lose his effectiveness, akin to how a sword rusts. He also characterizes the relationship between Ulysses and his son, Telemachus, well, using apathetic language such as ‘blameless’ but not strong, passionate language that he uses to describe his yearning for adventure, such as ‘with a hungry heart’. He also conveys the distance between the two, physically separating them and continuing the apathy felt by Ulysses, ‘he works his work, I mine’, by separating them between a pause and setting up the two characters as definitively opposed to each other.

The reason for the use of these techniques it so that Tennyson can highlight the flaws of reality, using the above examples, we can deduce that he wants the reader to believe that Ulysses wants nothing from the world he is currently in, and so can set up a more desirable alternative for the character to aspire to. This similarity is shared with The Lotos Eaters, who also describe the real world as something that is not worth enjoying. Rather than focusing on a single individual character however, Tennyson selects an anonymous group of sailors, creating a deliberate ambiguity that serves to block any potential interpretations we may have of the characters themselves, instead opting to listen only to the arguments posed by the Lotus eaters themselves. He uses a more general approach, whilst simultaneously integrating phonetic patterns into the text to reflect the point being made, with particular emphasis on the consistent use of the rhyming pattern-‘moan’, ‘groan’, ‘thrown’-which, with its elongated pronunciation has the effect of making the reader perceive toil, and thus relate it back into the text. He also repeatedly uses the word ‘toil’, a word that, instead of simply using ‘work’, has connotations of burden and suffering, and therefore is used to express discontentment with the daily labour undertaken by man.

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Tennyson also uses strong, positive imagery to represent the alternative and then contrasts it with the other negative points explored above, serving to try and entice the ‘reader’ into Tennyson’s escapist ideas. A particular motif he uses constructs the sailors as a ‘fully juiced apple, waving over mellow’ and then incorporates it into a cycle, but neglects to include any words pertaining to work or effort, implying he is creating an alternative world ‘that hath no toil’. Another, potentially subtler, technique he uses is soporific imagery and phonetic patterns that tie in with the notion of dreams, alternate realities where ...

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